


Kaleidoscope

by catsvrsdogscatswin



Series: Andercard Stories [2]
Category: Hellsing
Genre: Alternate Selves, Alucard has 500 years of baggage and Anderson has to wade through like all of it, Angst, Dracula Influence/References, M/M, No Millennium AU, Past Lives, Religious Symbolism, Slow Burn, Symbolism, Time Travel, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:28:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 55,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27240487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsvrsdogscatswin/pseuds/catsvrsdogscatswin
Summary: In touching an activated relic during a fight, Anderson is suddenly yanked into a vision of what seems to be Alucard's past. Unfortunately, while Alucard is there as well, he doesn't seem to remember anything past the 15th century, so Anderson is forced to somehow convince the vampire of who he is. Over, and over, and over again…
Relationships: Alucard/Alexander Anderson
Series: Andercard Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993612
Comments: 15
Kudos: 76





	1. Pontifical Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua, Padua, Italy, 1999 CE

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anderseeds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anderseeds/gifts).



* * *

_Love…  
Are you saying we can love each other? _

* * *

The first tick for the day going badly was the fact that Hellsing was in Italy. They had _no right_ in this area, no claim on this land, and the only reason they were here at all was because their target had fled from England to Italy after breaking into several museums and stealing esoteric scripts on early saints.

The second tick was that the woman had made a beeline for Padua, and the church that contained the relics of Saint Anthony within. Now, Alexander liked relics –and he liked them _as far away_ from his job as possible. "Collateral damage" did not even begin to describe the kind of havoc that vampire hunters tended to wreak in their surroundings, what with the challenges of keeping a creature that moved faster than the eye could track from ripping out their throats. You didn't worry about missed bullets or blades when a monster was bearing down on you, nor did the monster itself worry about the historicity of its environment when it was making a last stand. Most buildings were lucky to remain standing when a confrontation ended, and even when they were, whole rooms almost always had to be replaced, to hide evidence if nothing else.

In essence, things got messy, fast, when vampire hunting was involved, and Alexander wanted that chaos and destruction as far away from any holy relics as he could manage. It wasn't like the Vatican could get new ones.

But the third and final strike for just how worthless getting out of bed today had been, Hellsing hadn't just sent any agent, they had sent Alucard, unaccompanied, alone. They had sent a _vampire_ into the land of Rome.

The cigars the Hellsing woman smoked had clearly gone to her head at last, if she had somehow thought that that was a good idea.

What with the basilica being one of the eight international shrines recognized by the Holy See itself, Alexander was especially tense as he raced to get to the vampires inside the chapel proper before violence broke out. Aside from the relics, there were also a number of precious, irreplaceable treasures and artworks contained inside the church: just the thought of Alucard firing off even one shot from those so-called pistols of his had Alexander sweating.

One of the positives about this building, it was a basilica in both name and construction, which meant a large nave with a ceiling that soared high above the ground. It was a sanctuary and a treasure-house of God, where the images and art of the faithful were displayed in glorious splendor, giving the cavernous building the sense of a dragon's baroque hoard and inspiring the hearts of the congregation within to greater piety and devotion.

The open space _also_ made it very easy to find the vampires, who were gathered near the reliquary of Saint Anthony. Alucard, to his surprise, was at some distance from the vampire that had brought the golden reliquary to the ground and was tearing at it, a frustrated look on her face. Looking down, relief mixed with rage as Alexander saw that the filthy creature had created some kind of magical seal on the ground, and Alucard, at the very edge, was bound with odd, wispy tendrils of some rust-colored substance. However fragile they looked, they must have been formidable indeed, as the sigils on Alucard's gloves were glowing as they did when he exercised his power to the limits, and Alucard's teeth were bared in a scowl of frustration.

He wasn't being quiet, and the echoing noise of his rapid footsteps drew the attention of both vampires, though the one on the ground only glanced up at him briefly before looking back down to the reliquary, working with feverish speed.

"I'd avoid stepping into the circle, Judas Priest." Alucard noted dryly as he stopped a few meters away, the vampire flicking his eyes down at his imprisoned body. "Still, nice of you to finally show up. Better late than never and so on."

"Get your filthy, undead hands off of that!" Alexander snarled, ignoring him and addressing the vampire on the ground. He almost needn't have bothered: the relic was proving able to defend itself very well, even through the glass of its display. The remains of the saint seared the vampire's hands every time she touched the reliquary, making her yelp with pain and complicating retrieval quite immensely –after all, even if it was mostly gold, the reliquary was still not meant to be opened, and with the vampire being unable to touch it for more than a second before her fingers were charred right down to the bone, she couldn't get enough leverage to pry at it anyways.

"She seems to be having trouble keeping her hands _on_ it." Alucard noted, baring his teeth in a mocking grin. His eyes cut over to Alexander. "I would kill her now, if I were you. Regardless of ill-advised handling, she knows more than enough to complete this little ritual of hers."

"Shut up!" the vampire on the floor barked, balling up her hand and punching the glass that showed the saint's preserved chin and tongue, before hissing as she pulled the smoking, half-melted stump of her hand back. It healed quickly, however, and she punched the glass again as the nauseating smell of burning flesh filled the air.

Alexander flicked out a bayonet reflectively when he saw her strike the holy relic, before wincing and glancing around.

"Are you really going to let her destroy the remains of one of your saints rather than risk harming some statuary?" Alucard drawled, no longer paying attention to the vampire that had bound him as he watched Alexander with amusement, noticing his hesitation. Alexander gave Alucard a foul look as the bound vampire continued. "I knew the clergy were hypocritical, but this is rather sad, even for you."

"Oh, shut up." Alexander muttered, wishing for a moment that the vampire working to break open the relic had bound Alucard's mouth as well as the rest of him.

He fingered the hilt of his blade nervously. He was fast, true, more than fast enough to take a vampire by surprise if he timed it right, and the woman's attention was all on her burning hands and the relic beneath her, but if he threw a bayonet with enough force to pierce her skull or ribcage and she deflected it…

The sharp sound of cracking glass drew him out of his thoughts as the female vampire gave a sharp hiss of triumph. A spiderweb of fractures had spread on the display window of the reliquary, and she began to pry frantically at the pieces with sizzling fingers as a sharp pang of fear ran through him. If a vampire wanted something badly enough to dare the attention of Hellsing and the wrath of Iscariot, not to mention the very visceral pain of actually handling said relic, then it could only mean bad, bad things for the saint's remains. Most rituals consumed their ingredients, by fire or by dissolution, and the very fact that she had an array laid out on the marble floor indicated that she already had a specific goal in mind.

Burning fingers or not, the vampire worked fast. He had barely recognized the situation for what it was before she plunged her hand into the reliquary and pulled out the saint's jaw, red eyes alight with victory even as her fingers began to fizz and dissolve around the holy remains. A keen of mixed pain and triumph burst from her lips, and she stood quickly, already beginning to chant.

Alexander had seconds to act, possibly less, and he sent a silent prayer to God as he whipped the bayonet at her heart, hoping the momentary distraction of her achievement and the pain of the relic in her hand would keep her from dodging in that split second between throw and connection.

He exhaled in relief as God heard his prayer and the blade struck true, impaling the woman through the heart as she shuddered and staggered back, eyes wide, before abruptly turning to dust. The sigil on the floor writhed and faded, and the tendrils wrapped around Alucard dissolved like the mist they resembled. The saint's jaw fell in the midst of that ash and the huddled little pile of clothing, safe and undamaged.

Before anything else, even before confronting the still-living vampire, Alexander stepped forward quickly, bending down to carefully retrieve the relic. He paused as he noticed a tingle in it, a warmth that he felt even through his gloves, and swallowed.

"It seems that she managed to activate it." Alucard said as his booted footsteps came closer, and Alexander glared over his shoulder, seeing the vampire lazily approaching.

"It's not harmfully activated." he said with confidence, reaching down with his free hand to lift the damaged reliquary back upright. Though a paladin and not a researcher, he had still gained some experience in relics and their occult uses over the years, as well as a passing familiarity with most kinds of less religious occultism. Color and sensation were important: the relic was faintly glowing with a bright, healthy light, and the feelings he got from it were of peace and welcome, as a saint's remains should be. Likely, the vampire had only managed to charge up the holy power that resided within the relic before he killed her, though what exactly she planned to _do_ with the saint's jaw afterwards remained a mystery.

That was a question for later. After carefully dusting off the worse of the glass fragments and ash, he reverently replaced the relic, the tension in his shoulders easing a little as it was returned to the safe (albeit highly decorative) casing unharmed.

Only for Alucard to reach past him as he stiffened and immediately summoned a bayonet, plunging it through the bones of Alucard's wrist and twisting to the side to halt his progress.

"Don't you _dare_." he growled, and Alucard smirked at him, not caring about the painful tension in his extended arm –what would be painful for a human, anyways– or the blood that was slowly dripping from the wound and sliding down the shining blade.

"This relic is a part of our case." he drawled, not even bothering to hide the fact he was trying to recover it solely to enrage Alexander. Alucard had never cared about the procedure his organization followed and Alexander doubted he would begin caring any time soon. "Which is why I pursued that vampire here to begin with, _Catholic_."

"Lay one finger on that relic and I will _personally_ ensure the scandal is so big that the Hellsing woman will lock you in her basement again just to avoid the politics." Alexander spat, making Alucard roll his eyes.

"So very protective over a dead man's chin." he muttered derisively. Alexander bristled.

"It's a holy relic, you depraved abomination."

Alucard grinned at his retort, chuckling to himself. "You call me depraved when you revere corpses and ritualize cannibalism." he purred, steadily prodding at Alexander's temper. "Putting the remains in a pretty gilded cage doesn't change the fact that you're proudly displaying _remains_ , Judas Priest."

Alucard was tempting him to a fight. He was _trying_ to provoke him, intentionally, wanting another scrap, and damn him it was working. Alexander wanted to slam a bayonet into his face and drag down, split the mocking vampire's skull like a walnut.

But he couldn't. He _couldn't_. Not here, not right now, not when there were so many irreplaceable things to destroy with missed or careless shots. If this was an abandoned modern building, the vampire would have already been in a pool of blood on the ground, riddled with bayonets.

His teeth scraped together loud enough for both of them to hear, before Alexander wrenched the bayonet in Alucard's wrist harder, knocking his arm aside, and shifted to stand more between the vampire and the reliquary. He flicked the bayonet back into his sleeve, before reaching back to cover the open hole in the glass with his hand.

"We are not doing this." he said tightly. "I am not fighting you here and if you touch _anything_ , or God forbid, break it, the whole of the Vatican will tear you _and_ your Master apart. Get out."

He would've said more, but the words choked in his throat as he saw Alucard's eyes widen for a moment, crimson gaze jerking down to the hand covering the hole in the glass behind him.

"It seems I'm not the one who should be concerned about breaking things, Judas Priest." Alucard said, grinning a little. "Rookie mistake."

Rookie mistake? What did he-

Oh.

_Oh._

He was covering the glass with the hand that still had traces of Alucard's blood. He had brought vampiric blood into contact with a relic supercharged by another vampire for the purposes of a ritual.

Alexander had just enough time to curse before the light overtook them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief exposition, Anderseeds actually gave me three prompts to choose from when doing the art trade, but I enjoyed writing the last fic so much that I asked if I could do the other two. And with gracious permission, I can!
> 
> The beginning lines of each chapter are lyrics are from the song _Kuchizuke_ , by Buck Tick, which was the opening of the anime _Shiki_ , and while the quality of the plot of _Shiki_ is debatable, the music is unparalleled. More people that enjoy vampire media should know about that song.
> 
>  _Revere the dead and ritualize cannibalism_ :  
> So, a big part of the weekly Roman Catholic Mass is Eucharist/Communion, in which a priest blesses an unleavened cracker and some wine, turning it into the actual, literal flesh (cracker) and blood (wine) of Jesus Christ, which everyone in the service above the age of like seven is expected to eat and drink. This is a big deal, to the point of being basically what the entire service is built around, and no, it's never brought up that symbolically transforming food into human bits and pieces is like kinda the opposite of a blessing. No no, child, its _Jesus's_ flesh and blood that we're eating, which makes it a holy experience and not symbolically horrific. Its never treated as cannibalism despite rigid insistence that that the wine and crackers are Actually Jesus's Flesh and Blood, but if you're irreverent enough and the shoe fits…
> 
> Insider's perspective, the cracker is about the size of a quarter, wafer-thin, and tastes like papery cardboard unsatisfying nothing. The wine is also crap, but you can get away with refusing that by just…like walking past the people offering it to you. With the cracker you have to do this whole gesture and get blessed instead and stuff.


	2. Poenari Castle, Mount Cetatea, Wallachia, 1462 CE

* * *

__

_I cover your lips_

__

_I close my eyes, and give you a kiss deep in sins._

* * *

The rustling of leaves in the wind. Birdsong. Warmth.

Sensations came first, slowly filtering in like someone was painting a picture stroke by stroke. He heard before he could feel the sun on his face or the earth beneath his feet, was aware of the air on his skin before he could smell the loam of a forest and the unidentifiable, indescribable coolness that hinted at stone or mountains.

And then he could see, and his furious roar of "ALUCARD!" as he brought bayonets to both hands shook the nearby birds from their song as they fluttered off into the sky in an explosion of feathers, calling shrilly in panic.

So far as he could tell, he was standing, alone, in a grassy clearing in some kind of forest. The knee-high grass and the leaves on the trees were all a lush green, indicating that this was either summer or late spring, and though he couldn't identify the trees specifically, he had been in enough places to judge that this forest was closer to one of the two poles than it was to the equator.

Alexander ground his teeth furiously, trying to think. Given the slow fade-in of sensation, this probably wasn't totally _real_ , and that understanding was only furthered when he glanced down at one of his bayonets, tilting it up to look at his face. The polished metal wasn't concave, so it _should_ have reflected a wedge of him clearly, and yet it did not: his features were vague and swam in and out of focus like he was tilting a fogged-up spoon rather than steadily holding a flat blade.

So. Wherever, whatever this was, it was a construct, and not an actuality.

Still, there were constructs and then there were _constructs_. Looking around, he saw that the wind blew with unnatural regularity, ruffling leaves in the exact same way every time, and when he listened, the faint, infrequent birdsong was as repetitive as clockwork.

Right.

Well, if this was the finalized product of that fragmented ritual, he didn't understand it. Saint Anthony was the patron saint of lost things, as well as travelers, seekers, and several countries. If the vampire had been looking for something, or trying to turn back her own time, it was doomed to failure: this wasn't the right saint nor the right type of result for such a ritual. She had probably been looking for something –he vaguely remembered Maxwell muttering something about Hermetics and alchemy scripts in the materials she had stolen before fleeing to Italy. It couldn't have been the Philosopher's Stone, as that was made and thus not "lost," and he wasn't familiar enough with Hermeticism to describe what else she might have been looking for, except perhaps the Emerald Tablet. It had been supposedly written by the fabled founder…

But that had been lost in Egypt, so far as he could recall, and _wherever_ this place was supposed to be, or rather be a reflection of, it was nowhere near Egypt.

Speaking of which, where was Alucard? Alexander knew the vampire had been caught up in –whatever this was– with him, he had seen the light take Alucard as well, but so far as he could tell, he was utterly alone. There was only the breeze, birdsong, and…

Hoofbeats.

Perhaps he was not so alone.

Alexander deliberated for a moment, before deciding that more information was needed before he committed to a course of action, and withdrew his bayonets back into his sleeves, starting towards the approaching noise. If it was an enemy, it wasn't as if he couldn't summon his blades again, and surprise may be a key element in any future encounter –if this wasn't some strange ploy by Alucard.

As he walked, he noticed with some surprise that the wind was becoming more irregular, as were the faint chirps and tweets from the forest around him. The temperature became a touch more…real, more believable, rather than a generalization imposed on his mind. More scents grew on the wind, like this strange world was filling in its corners –dust and the myriad scents of horses and their leavings, and a scent so faint that he could only identify its familiarity and that it made him feel both uneasy and slightly queasy. Flowers, too, and more of the scents that he would associate with a forest and its many diverse plants. The air itself became sharper, somehow more intoxicating, and he noticed that he was approaching a dirt road, broad in its way but nowhere near as smooth or large as the paved roads he knew.

This, then, was probably the source of the hoofbeats, and Alexander lingered at the edge of the forest, noting that the ground seemed to slope sharply upwards on his left, like this road wound its way up a mountainside. From the right came the sound of approaching horses, however –the jingle of tack and the thud of their hooves on the hard dirt road– and Alexander turned fearlessly to face the oncoming party.

A young man in ragged chain mail came into view first, eyes alert and scanning the forest on every side. He spotted Alexander and pulled up short, hailing him in a language that Alexander didn't understand.

_Oh, wonderful._

Still, the fact that reality had steadily grown in clarity the closer he got to this road indicated that whoever –or whatever– was the centerpiece of this vision was here: in such situations, reality was sharper in the immediate sphere of the vision's focal point, then grew steadily less solid the farther away from it you traveled. In theory, once Alexander got past a mile or so, the world would probably fade out until he turned around and went back.

In the few seconds he had before the man –who was obviously a scout of some kind– became alarmed, Alexander studied him. The chain mail and the general look of his clothing indicated that this was not the vision of a modern man, but he wore no livery and had no obvious markers of allegiance or identification, aside from a clumsily-carved wooden cross around his neck.

Hmm. A Christian.

Alexander raised his hands in a peaceful gesture, stepping away from the shelter of the trees and the hypothetical possibility of any bandits or raiders concealed therein. Thankfully, a priest's cassock had not changed much over the centuries, and despite the man's obvious wariness and the likely dangerous surroundings of whenever this was, the fact that he was a holy man in a Christian country would bring him some small measure of trust.

Counting against that, of course, was the fact that Alexander was a man who regularly fought monstrous foes and he had a body sculpted to match. He looked like a warrior, and the scout would be a fool to miss that. Given the danger the scout's very existence implied, Alexander could very well be some kind of bait or distraction so a larger, concealed force could attack.

"I am a priest from Rome." he said in careful Italian. "I mean you no harm."

The man looked at him without comprehension, but he also seemed less tense. Still, if this was sometime in the medieval ages, Alexander would have _less_ chance of success if he spoke Latin –sure, another clergyman would be able to understand him, but common laymen wouldn't be able to for a few hundred years.

An imperious command came from beyond the turning, and the man winced, a brief expression of fear crossing his face –oddly enough– before he shouted something back, not taking his eyes off the priest by the side of the road. From the clopping of hooves that followed, Alexander supposed that he had been cleared as an immediate threat, and his eyes slid sideways to watch the approaching group.

In the middle of the ring of horses, well protected by men on either side, rode a man who was the obvious commander of the party. Unlike the others, he wore a full suit of expensive plate armor, made from overlapping metal strips –though he lacked a helmet of any kind– and an ornate-handled broadsword hung on his hip. His hair hung loose to his shoulders, rippling like darkened water, and a cape flowed behind him, black and somber. The man's face was set in a stern, cold expression, and an air of ruthless authority hung about him as comfortably as his cloak.

Alexander stiffened.

It was Alucard. Oh, he didn't _look_ like the vampire Alexander knew –less tall and more muscular, a neat mustache and careless stubble replacing his younger, unshaven face– but something about his appearance was unmistakable. Even though the vampire's face looked markedly different, older, perhaps more ragged, there was something in his expression as he looked down upon a scowling Alexander that reminded him irrefutably of the vampire.

Bloody hell, of course the arrogant bastard had been some kind of ruler.

 _"Cine ești tu, care nu îngenunchează în fața voievodului tău?"_ he said imperiously. The voice was absolutely unmistakable –it was Alucard– but the words made Alexander blink. Alucard was acting like he was…completely…immersed…in the vision…

Damnit.

Well, Alexander had clearly found the focal point of the vision itself: Alucard was the one whose blood had made contact with the relic, and it was Alucard who was speaking in a language Alexander hadn't the faintest knowledge of and was looking at him without recognition.

"I can't understand your language. I am a priest from Rome." he said, now in Latin, since Alucard was obviously some kind of high-ranking knight and thus had at least a slightly better chance of understanding him.

The vampire's eyes widened slightly, before they narrowed in thought.

"You have come to Wallachia without knowing our tongue." he replied in somewhat stilted Latin of his own, looking at Alexander with mixed suspicion and interest. "Why?"

Wallachia, hm? As far as Alexander could remember, this was the region that was the precursor to modern Romania, which meant that Alucard and the others were probably speaking medieval Romanian of some kind. Since Alexander hadn't a hope of understanding even the modern equivalent, he supposed this conversation would have to continue in Latin despite Alucard's obvious inexperience with it.

Medieval Balkans meant the Ottoman Empire, however, which gave him exactly the opening he needed.

"I travel to protect the children of Christ." he said honestly, though he winced a little on the inside. If Alucard was playing some kind of game with him with his lack of recognition and heard those words spoken earnestly…

The vampire grinned broadly, however, and said something loudly to his men, who all reacted with pleasure. Alexander's attention, however, was arrested by what he had seen when the vampire had grinned –or rather, what he _hadn't_ seen.

Alucard had normal human incisors.

"So you, too, are a warrior and a shield of the faithful." the not-currently-a-vampire said with a pleased, almost vicious smirk, looking down on Alexander from his horse. "What is your name, Father?"

"Alexander Anderson."

"Then know, Alexander Anderson," Alucard said haughtily. "-that you have come into the land of Wallachia, and that I am its voivode, to whom all these peasants owe their allegiance and protection."

Alexander blinked. Voivode –a warlord, not quite a king, but in many ways the undisputed ruler of a territory. It was a term largely used from the start of the tenth century, with roots in the Slavic languages. Alexander knew he should probably be more focused on grabbing Alucard and shaking him until he snapped out of it, but the allure of learning more about Alucard's past as a human –ancient past, apparently, since he was a medieval warlord who faced the Ottoman Empire– was a powerful temptation.

Alucard had paused however, and Alexander stiffened a little as he realized what the man was waiting for.

"I have only met princes of the church." he said, somehow getting the sense that outright defying Alucard-as-he-was-now would not be a good idea. There was a spark of cruelty shimmering beneath his odd-colored eyes, now hazel, now green, and his own men were clearly nervous of giving him any reason to be angry. "What greeting should I use for you, voivode?"

"Ordinarily, you would remove your hat," Alucard said, glancing wryly to Alexander's bare head. "-and greet me with the reverence due to my honorable position, but I shall allow a brief lapse in a holy man who has clearly traveled so far to defend Christiania."

It wasn't Alexander's imagination that all the soldiers around him relaxed as Alucard said that. Still, the idea of Alucard as a _human_ trying to harm him was almost enough to make him smirk, if not for the fact he had to control his expression so as not to upset the obviously volatile ruler. Unable to regenerate, unable to match the speed of a trained vampire hunter –Alexander could probably decapitate him so quickly Alucard would be able to watch the rest of his body die as his head fell to the ground.

The only reason that he _hadn't_ already was that this vision was clearly tied to Alucard in some way, and if he killed the focal point, there was an equal chance of him being returned to reality or ceasing to exist. It all depended on the nature of the vision: was Alucard the focal point because some action needed to be fulfilled on his end, or was this a vision tied to his essence? If it was the former, Alexander could possibly get away with killing him, since Alucard was not _actually_ human at the moment, just envisioning himself as his human self (complete with mental and physical limitations), but if it was the latter, killing the vampire would essentially be like detonating a bomb while standing right next to it. Sure, the threat was destroyed, but the immediate consequences were inescapable.

"Thank you, voivode." he said to buy himself time. Alucard had only given him his title, and Alexander didn't know nearly enough about Wallachian terms of respect –or how they would translate into Latin– to address him as anything else. "May I ask where I am? I have been…traveling, for some time."

"You are near Cetatea Poenari, my home." Alucard said imperiously, folding his hands in his lap. Though he spoke Latin, he gave the Romanian pronunciation, foiling any attempt by Alexander to understand the actual location. He would guess Alucard meant a keep or a citadel, since the title of voivode _did_ mean warlord and Alucard was clearly fulfilling his titular responsibility, what with having a group of guards while riding outside his own home and being at odds with the invading Ottomans.

Alexander's mind raced. Alucard was immersed in the vision completely, and as satisfying as it might be to slaughter his guards and beat the damn vampire until he saw sense, it was probably wiser to wait and see. Just because Alucard envisioned himself as human right now didn't mean he was helpless, and the fact that they were near Alucard's keep probably meant that there were more guards or soldiers in the area. Alexander _could_ kill a whole army of medieval peasants, but doing so would be very much in the way of trying to get Alucard to snap out of it. Also, in theory, Alucard's memory of "his human life as it was" could call up the guards again after Alexander defeated them, making things a pointless, enduring slog.

He needed to somehow find a way to talk to Alucard alone. Alexander was sure he could beat some sense into him, perhaps literally, but he would actually need to have a conversation away from all these visions of Alucard's people, who were still real in their own way and could act and influence Alucard's thoughts just by their reactions. Being locked up in a cell for madness or witchcraft would not help him convince the vampire at all.

"May I ask for your hospitality during the night?" Alexander said, finally lowering his hands. "I have no place to stay otherwise, and I don't know this land."

Alucard considered him for a moment.

"You may." he finally said. "The ride to the castle is long, however, and we have no extra horse."

"I can keep pace, as long as you don't gallop." Alexander said, unable to stop the flash of challenge in his voice or expression. Alucard raised his eyebrows as the men around him shifted nervously, unable to understand Alexander's words but very clearly understanding his tone.

"Up the slope of a mountain?" Alucard asked slowly, a hint of challenge in his own voice as a smirk flittered across his face.

"Yes." Alexander said without hesitation, holding his gaze.

Alucard laughed, and then said something dismissively to his men, waving them forward, before looking at the priest. "Walk with me then, Alexander Anderson, and we shall see."

Alexander moved to let the scout and the first few outriders trot past him, then turned and began to walk beside Alucard's horse, watching the guards begin to split their attention between him and the forest, wary of someone so close to their leader but also not breaking discipline in a potentially hostile environment.

"You claim to be a warrior, and yet you carry no sword." Alucard noted, glancing down at him. Alexander debated showing him how he could summon his bayonets, but decided against it.

"I was forced to sell my weapon to make it here." he replied instead, and Alucard hummed softly.

"Within Wallachia?" he said with an odd, cold, dangerous expression. "Perhaps I shall have to visit those people and educate them on what a sword means to a crusader."

Alexander felt briefly uneasy for some reason, but brushed it aside.

"It went to a good cause." he said. "Helping a Christian man defend his home."

Alucard rumbled low in his throat, but didn't say anything for a moment.

"So, you are from Rome?" he said as the group of horses turned to begin a switchback up the mountain. "I have asked the Holy See many times for more men. Have they finally answered my call? Are there others that come with you, or are you alone?"

Alexander winced. He wasn't even real, he wasn't even here, and _here_ wasn't real –but the strained hope in Alucard's voice was genuine. This was not a man who showed fear or hope or weaker emotions easily, which meant that the feral desperation in his voice, his posture, even the implicit existence of his guards was all the more painful to witness.

"I came alone." he said. "I…couldn't stand idly by while we were threatened."

Alucard spat something in Romanian that was probably a curse. "I cannot protect all of Europe against the Ottoman hordes with a force of mere peasants and volunteers!" he continued furiously in Latin. "I am holding a flood back with a dam of twigs and they send me _nothing_! Do they expect others to hold as long when I have been defeated!?"

"I…left Rome some time ago." Alexander said hesitantly. He had never been in Rome, or rather, the Rome of whatever age this was. "Opinions may have changed."

Alucard sneered. "The princes of the church have grown decadent and corrupt, safe in Rome and far away from the brutality of this war." he spat. "Do they risk their lives by coming to do their duty towards all the faithful? Do they even so much as risk their purses by sending food or supplies to those that do? No. It is men like you and I, Alexander Anderson, that protect the lands and people of Christ now."

Alexander hummed uncomfortably. Hearing Alucard, _Alucard_ of all people, righteously proclaim his faith was more than a little odd. He'd never really thought of what the vampire must have been like as a human man, and being confronted with it –quite literally– was a strange experience. He wondered what strange twist of fate had brought this proud, fierce warlord riding beside him into contact with a vampire, and what had kept the zealous man from destroying himself when he realized what he had become. This _was_ Alucard, and the vampire had lived for centuries after what this vision recalled. What had changed, beyond the endless stretch of years? What had turned _this_ into the Alucard he knew?

Unless the visions showed him more, though, that was inane speculation, and Alexander's attention sharpened as the faint scent he had been aware of earlier began to grow in strength the higher they went and the thinner the trees became. It was vaguely sweet, but somehow unwholesome, and instinctively made his hackles rise. Alucard and the guards did not react to it.

Alucard had not been lying when he said this path had led up a mountain –even when he was in peak physical condition, Alexander was beginning to feel tired and hot as the horses trotted easily upwards around him. He was not going to give Alucard the satisfaction, though, even an Alucard that didn't know him, and concealed any sense of exhaustion or strain as he continued to stride powerfully beside the voivode's horse.

His unease grew with that strange scent, however, until training and memory kicked in and he finally recognized the faint odor that wafted by on the occasional breeze.

"There are corpses ahead." Alexander told the group, stiffening.

Alucard looked down at him as he continued to ride, and the smirk on his face was so _very_ reminiscent of the Alucard that he knew that Alexander tensed and readied a blade in his mind.

"I know." Alucard said simply. "You shall see them soon."

It seemed that Alucard-as-he-was was not interested in giving the remains of his enemies any kind of burial, which fit somewhat with the cruelty Alexander sensed behind his courteous demeaner. He wondered if he displayed them in some way…

Alexander's thoughts trailed off as they crossed the line of cleared trees and the mountain opened up before him, an empty slope rising to the peak –but the mountainside was still forested in its own way, as dozens of corpses hung and dangled in the summer air, impaled on wooden poles that surrounded the bulky castle situated on the mountain's plateau. The path the horses were on wound right through it, all the way up to the castle's door.

No way.

No fucking way.

"You seem surprised." the man beside him said after a moment, looking down at him keenly. "Most react with horror."

"This isn't the first horror I've seen." Alexander replied automatically, his mind racing. "You're Vlad the Impaler."

"Did you not know of me before you came?" Alucard drawled, smirking. "But it is true. I am Vlad III Dracula, son of Vlad II Dracul, Voivode of Wallachia and scourge of the Ottoman Turks."

He then gave a hearty chuckle, murmuring to himself. "The Impaler –an interesting sobriquet. I shall have to remember that one for the future. You are most amusing, Alexander Anderson."

Alexander was still trying to come to terms with the ridiculous fact that Alucard _was Vlad the Impaler_. Oh, sure, it explained the cruelty and the brutality underlying his every word and action, but the name had become so synonymous with the fictional Dracula that it was like finding a demonically-possessed child's name was Damien. Incredulity meshed with popular culture in a way that even an experienced vampire hunter like himself was ill-prepared to deal with.

If he found a woman that looked like Seras Victoria and Alucard said she was his wife, Alexander was going to laugh. Or groan and smash his head against the nearest wall.

Well, at least now he knew why Alucard called himself "Alucard" when the name was so obviously a reference to the archetypal vampire. The Hellsing family –or Alucard himself– had likely thought it amusing to harken back to his human life in such a way, not to mention intimidate inexperienced targets with the implicit threat of the legendary vampire. Alucard was more than powerful enough to back up such threats, after all: assuming historical records were true, he had died at some point in the late 1400s, which meant that Alucard was over 500 years old.

_Christ._

"Other priests have offered censure when they saw this." Alucard –or rather, Vlad– noted as he looked down on Alexander, the group continuing to ride towards the macabre sight. "What say you?"

Alexander looked at the dangling corpses, the oozing slide of half-rotten entrails and the thick streams of ichor that spattered both bodies and the ground beneath the stakes, the murmuring buzz of flies and the sickening scent of decay.

"You said that your army is small, and not many of them are trained soldiers." Alexander said after a moment. "Fear is an effective tactic."

Vlad grinned. "You see this through the eyes of a warrior, and not a man of God." he said with interest. Alexander shrugged.

"Violence is the only way in which I can serve the Lord." he replied calmly. "I'm a man of God before anything else, but I'm more of a paladin than I am priest. There are those that can serve the faith through leadership, by example, or by generosity and charitable works, and I am not one of them. Combat is my only skill."

The other man looked approving.

"And so you use your brutality to defend the faithful who cannot defend themselves." he hummed, then looked ahead. "I, too, am the same. Strange to meet a kindred soul from so far away."

"Hmm." Alexander grunted. He hoped that Alucard didn't remember this conversation later: what he said was very true, of course, but Alexander wasn't sure he liked being equated to the vampire…doubly so when Vlad actually had a point. The both of them were members of the faith, and as Alexander had said, they both had talents in war and destruction that would be ill-fitting in the church hierarchy. So they both, in their own way, harnessed their unsuitable skill to serve and protect the only way they could, an experience that left them both exalted and isolated within their communities.

Alexander shook off those thoughts with a shiver. He was _not_ like Vlad the Impaler.

"It is as you said before: I use terror alongside my army in defending this land from the Turks. Since they do not fear God, I shall become the Devil to plague them." Vlad said, with an odd, almost hungry look in his eyes as he gazed at the forest of the impaled. "One shall die for one hundred, one hundred shall die for ten thousand, and even if for the billion lands of Christiania my small world burns and collapses, I know I shall have done my work well. That is the Jerusalem at the end of my prayers."

"Do your men see as you do?" Alexander asked quietly, and Vlad was silent for a moment.

"They fight because I command them." he said at last. "They fight because they have no other choice."

He reached down from the saddle, and Alexander tensed a little as Vlad rested a gauntleted hand on his shoulder.

"But now that I have another man of the faith to fight alongside, perhaps their confidence will be restored."

* * *

Watching a medieval castle at work was a somewhat novel experience. Servants rushed everywhere on errands, and everything was somewhat primitive, but at the same time, there was a constant undercurrent of human ingenuity that Alexander respected. This was a vision of a time with technology far behind his own, and yet the people reflected in it were industrious and resourceful, working with what tools they had to the best of their ability. The scent of linen and harsh soap filled the air, accompanied by the omnipresent whiff of horses, mixed with the smell of wood and stone, metal and leather. Many wore flowers or springs of pine near their collar, probably to block out the occasional gusts of rot that blew over the walls.

Alexander noticed a lot of the citizens of the castle were looking at him as they went about their tasks, and wondered if it was because he was standing beside their lord or because he looked out of place. Glasses were not common in this age, and just because the priestly uniform hadn't changed _much_ over the years didn't mean that it hadn't changed at all.

It was also strange to think that this had been Alucard's idea of normal, once upon a time, as Vlad relayed orders in brisk, curt Romanian to his people, sending them swirling off in new directions. Unlike the arrogance Alexander had grown used to, this was somehow a more…inexperienced aura, pride without as much strength as usual, an arrogance born from someone who was accustomed to ruling and expected to be obeyed on the spot, rather than someone whose confidence in his abilities was so great that he could not imagine an actual threat.

"I'm impressed that you managed to make good on your bold claim of keeping up with our horses." Vlad finally said in Latin, turning to him. He raked his eyes over Alexander's body appreciatively. "If all my men had a physique such as yours, I might have no need of peasant levies."

Alexander felt his face warming. He wasn't used to compliments on his appearance –he was a priest and most people didn't think it appropriate to give them. The few times someone _did_ comment on his appearance, well, it was usually some kind of monster trying to seduce him into lowering his guard, so he didn't pay attention anyways. There was also a certain element of discomfort when it was Alucard praising him, especially when Alucard didn't actually _know_ it was him and was giving this comment genuinely, out of ignorance.

"Regardless," Vlad continued without either noticing or caring about his discomfort, waving a hand. "I have ordered that baths be drawn before we dine. I look forward to discussing more with you later."

That was as clear a dismissal as any, especially when Vlad had waved a servant forward with the same gesture, and Alexander nodded to him politely before following the servant off to whatever rooms he had been assigned. It was breathtakingly fascinating to be within a medieval castle, even if he had to bend sometimes to get through doors and claustrophobic hallways, and Alexander would be enjoying this experience a lot more if not for the fact that he had gotten caught up in this vision to begin with and it seemed to be focused on Alucard.

How was he going to get through to him? Alucard seemed entirely subsumed by this vision, whatever it was and whatever purpose it had been intended for. The vampire was living as his human self, and Alexander knew more than enough about this period of time to know that getting the rightfully-paranoid ruler alone, even in his own castle, was going to be challenging. The ragged pride that Vlad exhibited, the underlying current of being beset on all sides beneath his veil of courtesy, the fierce, adamantine will to save his people –this was probably the second and longest of his three reigns, which ended in 1462. Vlad would be betrayed and imprisoned by Matthias Corvinus, the current king of Hungary, in November of that year, and held captive before being released in 1475 to wage war against the Ottomans once again, before he was killed in battle at some point between 1476 and 1477. The place of his death and burial remained unknown, which now made perfect sense, given as Vlad had become a vampire and had no grave in the traditional sense at all.

That kept niggling at him. Hadn't Vlad the Impaler been married twice and had multiple children? How was he supposed to have become a vampire? True, there were historical records that hinted at the possibility of transforming without a sire, but almost all of those records were thousands of years old and their accuracy was debatable. Plus, how would a Romanian warlord have gotten ahold of them, never mind understood them, and _doubly_ never mind decoding the cryptic instructions inside! The records were mostly ancient Sumerian and Egyptian, which even modern scholars were hard-pressed to translate, and the contents were so highly esoteric as to be useless –talk of "destroying all" for "gaining nothing" and other such cyclical, obscure comments.

Still, it was worth looking into. Disregarding old texts was a bad idea, no matter how strange they might be. It was something he would have to take care of later, once he managed to escape this fantasy. Now that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what Alucard's human identity had been, Alexander could work backwards and uncover, perhaps, enough to finally beat the elder vampire beyond a shadow of a doubt –or hope of recovery.

The thought made him grin, which he dropped as the young woman looked back at him and then quickly glanced away. Adjusting to the other components in the vision was somewhat difficult, especially as the servant was starting to blur at the edges. It was odd to remember that this was a reflection of a person, a human and an actual personality that had once existed, rather than a mere construct born of the relic's power, like the world around them both.

Reality was sharper in the castle than it had been outdoors, which made sense, since these corridors and the castle itself was something Alucard/Vlad was more closely tied to and familiar with. It was even possible that this was the castle he had forced enslaved boyars to rebuild, which meant, Alexander felt grimly, Vlad would be _very_ familiar with it.

The room he was escorted to was small and tight, which was typical of medieval keeps, and the "bath" Vlad had ordered was a steaming wooden bucket with a rough towel hung beside it, alongside a bar of soap. Still, Alexander had been in enough historical monasteries to know that the fact he had his own room and bed was extremely luxurious by the current standard, as was the fact that the water in the bucket was warm.

He nudged it with his foot, and watched as the water inside sloshed and oozed from side to side, creeping up the side of the bucket in slow motion before apparently remembering the laws of physics and plopping back down as irregular ripples spread across the surface, sloshing around to the other side more like Jell-O than actual water.

Damn vision. Damn vampire.

Well, it wasn't like he was actually worried about cleaning up for the vampire and his nonexistent entourage. Vlad was technically the only other personality within this sphere of reality, and his approval was a nonfactor. Alexander was far more concerned with somehow negating the hold this vision had on him, and thus hopefully getting them both out. Well, get _himself_ out at least –the vampire was welcome to dream away about his past all he wanted.

The best way to deal with this was probably something to do with either Seras Victoria or Sir Hellsing. Both women were inextricably linked to Alucard's soul, though both in different ways. So far as he knew, Seras Victoria hadn't yet accepted Alucard's blood and become a fully-fledged vampire in her own right, which meant that her essence was still deeply tied to his. The Hellsing woman, of course, wielded the control formed by her family's seals, which meant that she in turn also had a hold on Alucard's soul.

Alexander's problem was leveraging that somehow. He wasn't a magician, so he had no way to tug on the spiritual threads he was certain were there to essentially remind Alucard that he had them to begin with, which would almost certainly snap him out of this vision-induced memory loss. The best he could do would probably be to remind Alucard of them verbally, which he wasn't sure would work.

Alexander was _not_ going to just sit and tamely wait. The power of the saint's relic had sent the both of them into this stilted plane of reality, and there was a possibility that he would be stuck here for as long as Alucard's life played out if he wasn't careful.

500 years. _Absolutely_ not, especially considering that that time may pass in the real world as well.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, cornering a warlord in his own keep was rather difficult. Alexander didn't know it half as well as Alucard did, and being unable to speak the language left Alexander isolated and unable to ask questions. He walked over the battlements, ignoring the reek from the forest of rotting corpses, and was unable to spot Vlad on the slope, suggesting that he didn't plan to eat among them as so many woodcuts suggested. Perhaps he felt vulnerable eating outside his walls even on this steep mountainside –Alexander didn't know enough about medieval Wallachian borders to know how close this castle was or was not to Ottoman lines. The position of voivode was precarious and ascension and ongoing rule were often tumultuous at this point in history, too, with various countries and factions within said countries playing off of one another in order to seize power or gain revenge for prior –often bloody– coups.

Just in Vlad's life, if Alexander remembered correctly, his eldest brother Mircea was captured by boyars, blinded with a red-hot poker, and then buried alive, with Vlad's father (also called Vlad) being captured and killed shortly afterwards. Some of the brutality Vlad the Impaler showed to his boyars afterwards was out of vengeance for their deaths, and he would later find himself facing off against his own younger brother, Radu, who had sided with the Ottomans. This was a violent time, and despite –and sometimes because of– his vicious methods of ruling, Vlad's place as ruler was not secure. The boyars he tormented would eventually betray him –multiple times, if Alexander's memory was correct.

Knowing what he knew, even if it was only vague notes from various historical lectures on vampire history –Vlad the Impaler and Dracula were both covered in the "foolish assumptions newcomers make about vampirism" area of study– Alexander's next guess was that Vlad was doing something in regards to his army, or perhaps planning his next attack. He didn't seem like he had a lot of patience for other tasks, and Alexander set off through the castle in search of what might be some kind of a command center.

After a while of passing by blurry servants –some of whom didn't even have proper faces– Alexander noticed that everything was becoming sharper, clearer again, like the world had been brought into focus. He followed that and the sound of loud thuds to a courtyard, where it seemed the voivode had removed his armor and was practicing his swordplay in breeches and a tunic. With the way the tunic clung to his chest and shoulders, he had been at this for a while, and Alexander saw that his first assumption had been correct –in addition to being somewhat shorter, Vlad was also more muscular than the form Alucard typically wore. It made sense that his body had shifted over the years –a vampire had no need of muscle mass, with even the most thin, childlike of undead capable of tossing a grown man through a brick wall if they were well-fed enough.

Alexander studied the man as he swung, noting the power and skill in his movements. Apparently –if Alucard had actually retained this ability over the years– the vampire was more than just a gunslinger, which made the priest wonder why he had never tried to fight with blades. What with how much they both enjoyed their clashes, the vampire would probably be overjoyed to face him in an actual _sword_ fight, like some ancient duel of honor.

"There is an extra blade on the rack." Vlad said in Latin without turning around, making Alexander blink. The man's perceptional awareness was impressive, given that he wasn't a vampire hunter.

Unfortunately, Alexander couldn't turn that to his own ends –the blurry features and the breakdown of the world happened _away_ from Alucard's area of attention, which meant that making him look at anything automatically sharpened its reality.

"You assume that I came here to practice." Alexander said, but he was already heading over to the rack anyways. The temptation to cross swords with Alucard's human self was just too powerful.

He picked up the wooden sword and idly swung it through the air, testing its weight and balance. It mimicked the current knightly sword, being two-handed and double-edged, which was a deviation from his usual one-handed single-edged bayonets. Still, just because they were his _preferred_ weapon didn't mean he didn't know how to wield-

Reflexes honed by a lifetime of hunting monsters made him whip around, throwing up his guard, and he narrowed his eyes as Vlad's sword crashed into his, the other man grinning as they went into a bodylock.

"Impressive." Vlad said. "Very, very impressive. Not many can move so fast, Alexander Anderson."

"I've been well-trained." Alexander said, his eyes falling to the small silver cross that dangled on a cord around Vlad's neck. He had been wearing it earlier, over his armor –he seemed to never take it off.

This man would eventually become a vampire. As bloody as his deeds may be, Alexander felt a faint stirring of pity for him.

"Well-trained indeed." Vlad pulled away, but it wasn't a concession –he was drawing Alexander into the open space of the courtyard, inviting him to a better place for sparring. "But have you experience in battle?"

"Of course." Alexander thought he saw an opening and stepped forward, only for Vlad to twist out of the way by a hairsbreadth as their swords met and clashed again. He wasn't as fast as a vampire, but he was plenty fast for a human, and more than that, cunning. Alexander caught a glint of determined, almost deranged fervor in his eyes and sensed that Vlad was not going to concede: Alexander would have to beat him into a bloody pulp before the other man accepted defeat, even though this was a mere spar, and even then, Vlad would probably plot some kind of vengeance. The best he could hope for was a stalemate.

Alexander bared his teeth in a grin, this time not caring about who might see. He was more than used to dealing with opponents who would not bend, only break.

Vlad returned his predatory grin, and they moved together again, feinting and slashing, circling each other like wolves. Alexander was considered the finest agent in Iscariot for a reason, but after about five minutes of breathless combat, he had to concede that as far as swordsmanship went, Vlad was on his level. Even though he shone with sweat and his clothes clung to him with his prior exertion, Vlad seemed as fresh as Alexander, and the strength behind his blows never lessened.

Alexander thought, between rapid blows as the two of them whirled and snapped across the ground, that he might grow to respect this man. The indomitable will in Vlad was impressive, every minor defeat or deflection only spurring him on, and it made Alexander's traitorous pity twinge again when he remembered the man's foul end. Vlad would become a vampire. His faith, the well of strength that drove him now, would be unfulfilled.

But damn, it was satisfying to fight him. Vision or not, Alexander could feel his blood pumping hot through his veins as he and Alucard's past self circled each other, looking for an opening, before surging together like two opposing tides to clash furiously again. It wasn't quite as exhilarating as fighting the vampire in his modern form, but in a sense, limiting himself to what a human could do –no regeneration, no summoning his bayonets– was oddly relaxing. It was just him and just Vlad, just two men doing their competitive best to beat the other into the ground. Almost normal, in a way: something any other man could do, something any human could do, something that flicked his occasional insecurities about being _more_ than human away.

A querulous question in Romanian made them both pause and look towards the door, where a servant was watching them nervously. Abruptly, Alexander realized that the sun had begun to sink in the sky, and beneath his bright-eyed fervor, Vlad looked exhausted. Had they really been fighting that long?

Vlad replied to the servant, then laughed and looked at him, lowering his sword point to the ground and clapping Alexander on the shoulder with one hand.

"Well-fought!" he said. "I recant what I said earlier. If all my men were like you, I would have sacked the walls of Constantinople by now!"

It was very, very odd to feel Alucard grab him and feel warmth coming from the man's hand.

"I take it dinner is ready?" Alexander asked, ignoring the compliment as he cracked his neck slowly. He rolled one sore shoulder, where Vlad had gotten a lucky hit in earlier.

"Indeed." Vlad agreed, saying something additional to the servant, who scurried off. "Did you come in search of me for a reason, or were you looking to keep your skills sharp?"

Ah.

Right.

The vision they were both stuck in.

Alexander felt his face warming as he realized that, with the thrill and release of combat, he had _completely forgotten_ about the fact that this had been a prime opportunity to try and snap Alucard out of this illusion.

He groaned and pulled a hand down his face, lowering his sword as well.

"I had…something I wanted to discuss with you in private." he mumbled, shaking his head at himself and walking over to return the sword.

"Really?" Vlad sounded amused. "Why in private?"

"It would be a long conversation." Alexander said, which was the most honest answer that would avoid setting off Vlad's paranoia.

"Well, perhaps you can begin it at dinner." Vlad said as he set down his sword as well. "I would have you join me at the high table."

Alexander sighed. "Wonderful."

* * *

The visions of Vlad's people were _staring_.

Even though they were only visual echoes of the past, even though they were mere constructs formed by Alucard's mind to completely immerse himself in this illusion, Alexander still felt needlessly exposed and vulnerable, sitting beside the voivode as they ate. It wasn't because he was dirty –Vlad had ordered more buckets and they had both stripped down to clean themselves off, since the water was actually acting like water in the presence of the vision's focal point and Alexander did not enjoy being sweaty and reeking. At least he had some privacy, since Vlad was not paying a lick of attention to him, though Alexander had glanced over curiously to see the old wounds peppering his muscular chest. It was odd to think that no trace of them remained despite Alucard technically having the same body, since Alexander had ripped him open like a macabre present more than enough times to see muscle reform into flawless skin.

His eyes had swiftly jerked away when Vlad reached for his belt, though, heat rising to his face.

Anyways, it wasn't like either of them were any less presentable than the other guests, a fact that was making Alexander increasingly uncomfortable as women glanced at him and then whispered to each other.

"Why do your people keep…looking at me?" he finally asked, not wanting to give the volatile overlord a chance to practice his favorite occupation even if these "people" were merely trace memories.

Vlad looked at him with surprise, then swept his eyes across the hall, and smirked.

"I see you truly have kept to your vows, Alexander Anderson." he said with amusement, making Alexander frown.

"Of course I did." he said indignantly. "Sexual immorality may be a –an epidemic during this time, but I have _never_ engaged in such behavior!"

Vlad looked at him approvingly. "Too few of your compatriots feel the same, alas." he agreed. "Which is amusing, as there are no doubt several women in this hall considering an infidelity with you right now."

Alexander went red, sputtering incoherently for a moment.

"W-what?!" he finally choked.

"You are a handsome stranger, a warrior of god that has traveled across Europe to defend our land." Vlad drawled, continuing to smirk and chuckle as he swirled the wine in his goblet. "Were you not a priest, you would probably have several marriage proposals by the end of the night."

Alexander groaned in embarrassment, covering his eyes with one hand as Vlad laughed louder.

"It is good that others of the faithful are finally answering my call." he finally said after he calmed down a little, his smirk fading into sobriety as he took a drink of his wine. "It is exhausting, trying to hold off the Ottomans on my own."

Alexander nodded in uncomfortable agreement, looking away as he tapped his fingers against the wooden table.

"I am doing everything I can, but it is not enough." Vlad continued in frustration. "Every step I take is hampered by a thousand fools holding me back. They say they cannot give me troops, so I levy my own, but I cannot empty Wallachia of all its people!"

His fist clenched around the goblet, the wine inside trembling just a little.

"I spread fear and I am _proud_ to spread fear, for how else would I be able to keep peace?! The boyars and Saxons are leeches upon Wallachia –every measure I take is to drive the Ottomans from our land, and still those worthless fools impede me."

He drained his wine with a swift jerk and then all but slammed it against the table, breathing heavily for several moments.

"I am tired." Vlad finally said, quieter. The fury in his eyes had burned out, leaving them hollow as he looked at Alexander. "My duty wears on me, as righteous as it is. I stand alone with an army a tenth of the size of my enemy's, made of peasants and children. How could any one man hope to stem the tide of the Ottoman Turks for long with what I have now? I cannot build a palace from mud, and though I can become the Devil to plague my enemies, I am, in the end, only a man. I am fallible. I am trapped between the sultan and the lands I protect, and they will not protect me in turn."

"You aren't the type to give up." Alexander replied.

"Oh, I am not." Vlad said with a crooked smile. "I will struggle to the bitter end, regardless of the aid I may never receive. I will make them pay in blood for every step they take on Christian soil, and if I am killed in turn, so be it. I will die knowing I have given my life to protect the children of Christ, and that shall be enough."

He almost sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that, and Alexander exhaled.

The man Alexander was talking with was hundreds of years dead, body and soul. There was likely nothing left of Vlad within Alucard, and if there was, it was likely only embers. He should _not_ pity him. It wasn't worth it.

That didn't stop him.

However, whenever Alucard had died, he had not died with faith, as evidenced by the very fact that Alexander knew him, hundreds of years in the future. If Alexander had been caught up in this vision as well, immersed in it and forgetting both the past and the future, seeing Vlad as an isolated man without knowing his history, Alexander would probably admire him, his faith and resolve, his ironclad determination and his adamantine will.

As it was, he was only saddened to think of what this man would become.

"You also don't seem like the type to divulge these sorts of things." Alexander said after a moment, making Vlad let out a startled chuckle.

"I am inclined to trust you." he hummed. "There is a strange comfort in your presence."

Alexander snorted softly. His brief hope that Alucard was coming out of it on his own was certainly dashed at those words, which were the complete opposite of anything the vampire might say.

"That's because you know me." he said, finally giving up. To hell with all of this –he was rapidly getting tired of playing along with the vampire's memories, not enjoying how they made him feel. "Just as you know Sir Integra Hellsing, and Seras Victoria."

Vlad gave him a strange look, and opened his mouth, before a trace of confusion marred his features and he closed it again.

"Those names are familiar, aren't they?" Alexander said, turning to look at him. "You know them."

"Is this the private conversation you wanted to have?" Vlad asked, a dangerous glint coming to his eyes.

"What day is it?" Alexander returned, narrowing his eyes. "What year? What were you doing before you came across me in the forest? Why does _everything_ you've done today feel familiar?"

Uncertainty flickered across Vlad's face, before he inhaled sharply, mastering himself.

"We will talk in private, Father Alexander Anderson." he said with icy control in his voice. "And you _will_ have an explanation for this."

* * *

"Does the name Alucard mean anything to you?" Alexander said without preamble, once they had retreated to what was probably some kind of private room for the ruler of the keep. It seemed like Vlad used it for an office, but in an age with such sparse literacy, Alexander wasn't sure if he had enough paperwork to need one. The voivode had taken a seat behind the desk, but left him to stand, of course.

"It seems familiar." Vlad said, frowning. Alexander groaned.

"Stop playing games with me already, vampire." he muttered under his breath in English.

"I am _not_ playing games-" Vlad began righteously in Latin, then paused, a flash of confusion on his face. "I-"

"Your name is Alucard. You serve the Hellsing Organization based in London, England, and you have _never_ been so infuriating as right now!" Alexander snapped, again in English as he slammed his hands down on the table. "Snap out of it already, you damn bastard! I've been skulking around all day, watching you parade around within visions of your past, and I'm sick of trying to understand why or how _you_ were the only one affected by the ritual and why its put us both into a vision of your human life!"

Vlad's eyes widened as a medley of emotions crossed his face, and Alexander blinked, drawing back a little. Was it really that easy…?

"Alucard?" he asked, and Vlad frowned.

"I don't- I am not sure." he said carefully in Latin. "I remember things I should not remember, but it is…blurry."

"Hmm." Alexander grunted, relaxing a little more and readying his fist to slug the vampire right in the face. "So you're back?"

"Yes. No. I don't-" Vlad shook his head, looking down at his own hands in frustration, flexing his fingers as though they held the secrets of what puzzled him. "It's hard to explain."

"Try anyways." Alexander said without sympathy.

"I know that I know you. I know that I know those women you spoke of. I know that what you say is true and this…is not real. That this is a memory, or a vision, or both." Vlad said. "But that is all."

Alexander blinked. "All?"

"I do not know how I know you. I do not know what there is for me outside this…vision." Vlad said slowly. He looked up at Alexander as something of fear flickered in his eyes, like a candle being lit. "You said that this is my "human" life."

Alexander winced and looked away. "You don't need to worry about that right now."

"I am still a voivode, Alexander, and I can and will have you flogged." Vlad said, quickly regaining his imperious demeanor as his eyes narrowed in warning, making Alexander glare at him.

"I can and will rip your soldiers apart before they try." he said back, and the corner of Vlad's mouth twitched.

"Yes, but doing so would inconvenience you, or you would've done so by now." he said dryly. "And I am not above making your life difficult."

"Don't I know it." Alexander muttered to himself, drawing a hand down over his face. "I don't suppose you know anything about rituals that involve saints' relics?"

Vlad looked annoyed at being put off, but answered anyways. "Some. I remember a skull and blood?"

"Jaw, not skull." Alexander corrected, straightening back up. "The relic of Saint Anthony of Padua came into contact with your blood after being charged for an unknown ritual by a vampire."

Vlad went very, very still. Alexander noticed this and eyed him with expectation.

"Saint Anthony is the saint of lost things. Lost souls." Vlad said quietly, the fear in his eyes flickering brighter. Alexander's prior wince became a cringe as his eyes darted away again, and Vlad exhaled softly, as though that confirmed his suspicions.

"That has nothing to do with the ritual." Alexander said uncomfortably. It wasn't so much that as it was that _this_ version of Alucard didn't need to know what he was, what he had become.

There was a long silence, as Alexander fixed his eyes on the red-orange sheen of the setting sun that streamed through the window and fell against the stone, and Vlad watched him like a hawk watching a mouse.

"I am something cursed, aren't I?" Vlad asked softly.

The words fell into the deafening, ringing silence that surrounded them as Alexander closed his eyes in resignation. He didn't say anything.

"How long has it been?"

"Does the phrase "curiosity killed the cat" mean anything to you at this age?" Alexander finally snapped, looking back at him with a scowl. Vlad's expression was deadly serious, any trepidation hidden behind a mask of solemnity.

"I deserve to know." Vlad told him, eyes holding his. "Satisfaction will bring me back."

"You became a vampire." Alexander said after a moment, watching Vlad's hazel eyes widen slightly. On instinct, the other man's hand flew to that small, dangling silver cross that he so seemed to cherish, clutching it in a protective, fearful motion. "And you live for five hundred years after you die."

There was another long, long silence.

"How?" Vlad finally rasped. Alexander frowned and shrugged.

"I don't know. I doubt anyone knows, in my lifetime at least." he admitted. "I didn't even know that you were Vlad the Impaler when you were alive, much less how or why you became a vampire."

"Vlad the Impaler." the other man murmured. "So that is how people remember me?"

"You're somewhat infamous." Alexander said with a brief smirk, before it faded. "Your people mostly revere you as a folk hero, if that helps."

"Mostly?"

"You stuck people on spikes, Alucard."

Vlad huffed in amusement at that one.

"I stand by what I said earlier." he replied. "The traitors of my country obey me because they fear me, and I wage war against the Turks by using that selfsame fear."

"Whatever." Alexander waved it aside. However bold and careless Vlad acted, Alexander could tell that the news had shaken and disturbed him deeply. That made him feel guilty, and he didn't like it. "In any case, you said you know a little about rituals. How do we –move on, escape, break it, whatever the appropriate term is?"

Vlad was silent for a long moment, considering, his eyebrows furrowed in thought.

"Saint Anthony _is_ the saint of lost things." he said at length. "He is also the one that finds them."

"Lost and found." Alexander hummed. "You think this ritual had something to do with seeking something in the vampire's past?"

"Perhaps reviewing their memory, if it was long enough." Vlad said, thumb rubbing over his cross, then frowned again. "If that is true, you may have to pass through other stages of my memories."

Alexander winced. "I hope not."

"As do I, since we will probably go through them together and I can't say I enjoy the idea of someone else raking through my mind." Vlad said, eyeing him with disfavor, before he smirked a little. "Though perhaps you are a holy agent of God, sent to reclaim my soul, in which case I can only encourage it."

Alexander sputtered, making Vlad's smirk widen, even though there was a sharp edge of something fearful, melancholy, _desperate_ behind it.

"In any case, I would assume that my blood being spilled was the trigger, which should mean we only have to spill it again." he continued, eyes flicking around the room. "We'll have to find a sword-"

He fell silent as Alexander summoned a bayonet, eyes widening slightly.

"Here." Alexander flicked it around so that the handle was offered to Vlad, who took it slowly.

"You really are a very interesting man." Vlad said, looking up at him, before glancing down and flicking the blade across his palm without a wince. Blood welled thickly to the surface, and Vlad gave him a measuring look, before curling his fingers and flicking them outwards, spattering some of the droplets on Alexander's chest as he made a face.

"You couldn't find a neater way to do that-" he began, only to stop as they both started glowing with the same light as the relic.

"Blood from me spilled on you." Vlad said with satisfaction. The smugness on his face was so _insufferably_ like Alucard's that Alexander scowled at him as they went, not offering any final words of consolation to the lost soul before he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for proliferate trust in Google Translate, lack of specific knowledge on medieval Romanian/Wallachian social hierarchy, and gratuitous assumptions on the vocabulary possibilities of Latin. Historical/linguistic accuracy is not the focus of this fic, and Hellsing has already proven to disregard some aspects of Vlad the Impaler's life.
> 
>  _One shall die for one hundred_ :  
> Alucard is paraphrasing his lines towards the end of the 8th manga volume.
> 
>  _Handsome stranger_ :  
> Scientifically speaking, humans have steadily been becoming more attractive over the generations, so it makes sense that everyone in the fifteenth century would be swooning over Anderson, since he's fairly attractive by modern standards, healthy, well-built, etc.
> 
>  _The boyars and Saxons are leeches upon Wallachia_ :  
> Historically, you can divide accounts of Vlad the Impaler into three rough camps: the Romanians generally see him as an extremely violent Robin Hood, who destroyed corruption and spread wealth back from the boyars (nobility) to the general public, the Russians see him as brutally violent for the sake of ensuring his control but still technically a positive force for the country, and the Germans are the ones who portray him as a baby-eating devil and popularized a lot of his most horrific legends. This was, technically, warranted, as Vlad the Impaler did not like Saxon-German settlements in Wallachia one little bit (for various reasons including politics and economy), and they were the most frequent subject for his purges and impaling aside from the Ottoman forces.
> 
> Its all a matter of perspective, really.


	3. Castle Dracula, Călimani Mountains, Transylvania, 1687 CE

* * *

_Love…  
We can love each other._

_I pierce through the nape of your neck._

_I close my eyes, and give you a kiss deep in sins._

_We can never return, that's fine.  
Gazing at the midnight, we drink up the wine._

* * *

His first sense of awareness was of the dark.

Then cold bit into him, and Alexander hissed, chills sweeping along his flesh even under his heavy cassock and several layers as he felt the sharp flick of some kind of wind across his face. When he shifted, he heard a soft, crunching _creak_ of snow underfoot, and he scowled in distaste as his eyes struggled to adjust to the dark and the world struggled to form itself around him, gathering shape around its nucleus: Alucard.

Of course, Alucard wasn't _here_ , because that would be far too convenient.

No, Alexander was alone in a snow-draped forest with bare branches that raked the starry sky, breath misting in the air before him as he looked around irritably. Still, that breath caught when he eventually looked up at the stars, seeing them cradled in the endless black vault of the sky, far brighter and stronger than any stars he had ever seen before. It was an awe-inspiring sight, especially taken in tandem with the unnatural stillness and silence of the winter-shrouded forest around him: darkness and light twisted and coiled in upon each other in a fantastic array of snow and bark and moonlight –glimmering, dead, and perfect.

He hated that Vlad had been right.

The change of seasons alone was more than enough to ensure that this was not the same time as the prior memory-vision, though he could see the familiar looming shapes of bulky, domineering mountains heaving themselves up into the sky on every side. So, this was probably still Wallachia –or maybe Romania, at this point– and this was almost certainly when Alucard had become a vampire proper. Or perhaps when and how he died…

Alexander listened, and the silence was piercing, deafening, and chilling. No –by most accounts, Vlad the Impaler had died in battle, and even if it wasn't a pitched raid or intense combat between retreating forces, Alexander could not imagine Alucard, Vlad, or any form of him dying _quietly_. Even if an arrow hit him between the eyes, he would make sure to drag it out and roar one last scream of defiance before collapsing back, and if someone was fighting him in hand-to-hand combat –as Alexander had recently learned– Vlad was more than skilled enough to defend himself, and more than proud enough to hurl curses and threats as he did so.

Good. Alexander had known the human side of Alucard for only a little while, but it definitely would've been…uncomfortable, to watch him die while doing nothing, despite Alexander knowing full well that everything around him now was merely a vision of things long past, a memory made physical, and he wouldn't be _able_ do anything to help Vlad, even if he wanted to.

Just look at the footprints he left behind –or rather, _didn't_ leave behind– as he picked a direction at random and started off, heading for an area behind a particularly craggy mountaintop where the stars seemed brighter, keener. Snow crunched underfoot, but the marks were gone before he stepped forward: Alexander didn't leave an impression in this world, which remained in pure crystalline perfection as he moved through it, like a scene captured in a snow globe.

"Couldn't have made it easy for me, vampire." he muttered under his breath, feet _shushing_ through the snow. It wasn't deep, or at least, the world didn't seem to be well-formed enough for him to sink down into it, which was a pleasant, if slightly disturbing convenience. At least he wasn't trudging through a bitter night with snow up to his knees or worse, hampering his every moment and soaking his pants through. Alexander could survive hypothermia, as he could survive most things, but that didn't make it _pleasant_ to endure.

It was also doubly unpleasant when he knew with utter conviction that none of what he was feeling right now was _real_ , and there were few things as annoyingly redundant as a hallucination or vision forcing uncomfortable sensations on him. It was the ordinary discomfort of the sensation itself, whatever it may be, but then an additional layer of irritancy and gall was added when he knew the thing affecting him wasn't real. Alexander could endure mud or water balloons from his orphans when he came out during their games and they ignored his orders to not throw things at him –children were playful and he understood that– but that was real, physical mud or ice-cold water that wasn't an affront to his every sense and a direct attack on his own ability to perceive.

He also didn't _have_ to endure this discomfort, as he did with them. Alucard was the nucleus of this vision, the focal point of this reality, and it was Alucard who had decided for whatever bizarre reason to manifest now, in the dead of winter, on an icy mountain.

Bastard.

"When I find you, vampire, I'm going to rip your spine out through your mouth and stake you with the bloody remains." Alexander seethed to himself, teeth grinding together as he continued to climb on what he now realized was a frozen-over road winding through the trees, leading up to the peak of the mountain and the vague shadow of a building that he could pick out atop it. "Can't fly down to meet me at the bottom, oh no, and you have to build your damn castle teetering atop a precipice _always_ , in any age, apparently. I'm surprised Hellsing doesn't have a belfry for you to roost in."

Maybe Alucard was allowing him to see the natural beauty and power of the surrounding landscape in which he had presumably been raised in as a fledgling, but that was an overly generous view to take. Alucard took delight in aggravating him and was probably eagerly awaiting Alexander's outraged, half-frozen arrival on his old doorstep.

He wondered what sort of woman Alucard's original sire was. Had been? After all, Alucard was alone now, so presumably she had either died long before the Hellsings had captured him or, perhaps more probably, died in the defense of her fledgling when he was taken. Vampires were notoriously protective and possessive by their very nature as parasitical beings, clinging to what was theirs and all too often taking what was not.

Of course, that was on the assumption that the vampiress in question hadn't been drifting by a battlefield and idly sucked down a meal before leaving her victim for dead, not knowing she had created a fledgling to begin with as she abandoned a confused and dazed Vlad to crawl under a rock somewhere and shelter from the eventual onslaught of the sun.

Alexander's teeth ground louder. However cruel and violent Vlad had been, he had still deserved far better than to have been unceremoniously shoved into damnation because some misbegotten _whore_ was hungry and the voivode's battered body had seemed particularly appetizing that day. What Vlad had done, he had done for faith and to save his people from an overwhelming threat, and Alexander was in _no_ position to judge someone who used violence in the name of God. Even excessive violence. Even _brutal_ violence.

At least climbing kept him somewhat warm, and it was uncanny to hear the utter, dead silence except for his own rhythmic steps and huffing breaths. The wind blew regularly, but once his body had become acclimatized to the bitter chill in the air, the wind wasn't really noticeable except with the occasional stronger gusts, and it oozed through the rocks and trees silently, without a hum of wood or a whistle of cracks. It was winter, of course, so no birds sang and any water was frozen and still, and this late at night, there were no animals abroad to scuffle and skitter in the dead undergrowth. It was all very normal and serene, an ordinary winter's night deep in the forested mountains with only human imagination for company.

The back of his neck prickled. Alexander knew this kind of watchful silence.

Cliché upon cliché that the statement was, it was still _too_ quiet. This was the kind of silence so deep that he could hear the blood pulsing in his ears, a silence like dropping to the bottom of a deep, dark well and feeling the water enfold him in utter blackness, blocking out any noise or cry. It was the silence of pure fear, when every animal and what felt like every twig held its breath and _hid_ , crouching and huddling against what shelter it could find in the hopes that a malign _something_ would pass it by. It was the silence that made even humans reluctant to _move_ , lest they draw attention to themselves, every shift and every breath ringing out like a gunshot in the still, dead silence.

 _Turn around. Go back._ The very mountains seemed to whisper, looming above him in wedges of patterned shade against shadow, hunched and watching. _It is not safe for you here._

Alexander kept walking resolutely, ignoring that deafening, expectant silence. He knew what it meant –there was a vampire nearby, and it was _powerful_. More than that, though, this was a place where that vampire had dwelled for centuries, perhaps, soaking the area in its presence and aura until the very land itself was a seat of its power. It wasn't so much a documented phenomenon anymore, on account of very few places remaining undisturbed for long enough for the vampire to feast to the point of imbuing the area with their essence, but there were more than enough records of it, tracing all the way back through the medieval eras. Manuscripts of experienced and sensitive hunters spoke of a "malign presence" and a "choking silence" that permeated the rough area of the vampire's territory and hunting grounds, and it was commonly theorized that that sensation was a result of the spilled blood and dark magic gathered by a vampire's natural voracious feeding.

One such incident had even made its way into popular fiction. In his so-called novel, _Dracula_ , Bram Stoker described Jonathan Harker's experience in Transylvania, mentioning strange auras, gloomy and awe-inspiring emotions, and a pervasive feeling of the old world having more power than the modern and new. All of this was centered on the personage of Count Dracula, and Alexander frowned as the worn but imposing battlements of a castle rose ominous and shadowy against the bright snow and rattling trees. Like most vampire hunters, he was of the opinion that _Dracula_ was nothing more than a sensationalized case study –the remnants of a hair-raising hunt that Stoker had either been involved with or had heard of and somehow gotten the notes on, before pulling errant source after source and stuffing it all together to form a haphazard horror novel for the public masses.

There were plenty of familiar, identifiable elements to the experienced hunter in that novel, of course –the feeding, the methods of extermination, even the hunt itself– but there was also far, far too much that was glossed over, reinvented, or even fabricated to better serve the story. The bloodline Count Dracula claimed was impossible –Attila the Hun was in no way related to Vlad the Impaler, both of whom he claimed as ancestors– and Stoker's descriptions of Romania were vague at best and downright xenophobic at worst. Given the importance that Romania played, the common consensus on _Dracula_ was that Stoker had gotten ahold of someone else's notes, and perhaps without even realizing their value, copied them over into a story.

But the notes had to have come from _somewhere_ …and looking up at the imposing castle, Alexander had to wonder…

After all, Dracula had claimed both heritage and synchronization with Vlad the Impaler in the novel, and as Alexander now knew, Vlad _had_ become a vampire. Alucard was Dracula spelled backwards. It was a logical conclusion: perhaps _too_ logical, and that was throwing him off. Dracula –and through him Vlad the Impaler– held an almost mythic status amongst the vampire-hunting community, living and undead. Any half-witted fool could make the connection between those names and Alucard's, which, again, would serve as a potent threat against cocky upstarts or wary strangers.

The flip side of that was if the threat was _true_.

Coming to terms with the fact that Alucard was Vlad the Impaler was hard enough, like standing over a precipice formed of all the legends and anecdotes and tales of horror that swam throughout both the vampire-hunting world and the world of the mundane –standing over it, and then looking down.

But Alucard actually being _Dracula_ , perhaps even the Dracula of the novel?

That was like walking _off_ of the cliff. It wasn't an easy step to take: even in thought, the mind rebelled against the concept, so horrifyingly vast was it in its simple implications. Alucard was potentially the most powerful –and certainly the most infamous– vampire in all of recorded history. The implications were nearly as monstrous as the man they centered around.

Alexander shoved them from his mind as he finally came to a halt outside the castle, looking up at its imposing stone walls, looming over him in the dark. It was a dark, hulking, fortress of a building, perched precariously on a plateau with a sheer drop on three sides, plunging hundreds of feet down to the naked forest below. What windows there were –and there were not many– were thin, protected slits, giving the castle an air of unwelcome and menace. It wasn't falling apart at the seams, but it was also not well-maintained, giving it an odd air of suspended time –it could have been in use that day, or a decade ago, or even a century. That was the thing about stone: it wore time well. There was a reason so many vampires found sanctuary in crypts and tombs.

Of course, pieced together with the rest of the castle's architecture, the lack of discernable habitation only made it more unsettling –it was like a trap with a constantly raised door, polished _just_ enough to seem appetizing, dilapidated _just_ enough to make it seem safe. It would give shelter from the cold and whatever lurked outside, but there was no telling if something even worse already slept _inside_.

Well, no telling for an ordinary travel in the time this vision reflected, that was. Alexander already knew damn well that there was a bloodsucker in the basement.

He stalked through the entrance in the curtain wall like he owed the place, entering a wide courtyard with arches leading off to various parts of the castle.

"C'mon, you damn vampire." he muttered to himself, glaring around when there was no sign of Alucard in any sense to greet him. He wasn't here in shadow, or wearing either of the shapes Alexander knew him in, and after hiking up a damn _mountain_ , Alucard could have at least given him some form of courtesy, for once.

One of the large, ornate carved wooden doors to the main keep slowly creaked inwards, and Alexander raised an incredulous eyebrow. That was needlessly dramatic, even for Alucard. Was his master still here? Depending on her attitude towards the clergy –and it was almost guaranteed not to be good– he and Alucard may have to fight her memory-self to a standstill, or just flat-out exterminate her. Fighting a vampire that was presumably stronger than Alucard, though…

Alexander didn't shiver with trepidation, but he did walk through the opened door into the grand hall ready and prepared for an immediate attack. The door slowly creaked shut behind him, bathing the room in darkness, but it took less than a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. Those were always the worst few moments of a hunt –the biological sense of vulnerability when he was deaf and blind and knew that a far more powerful predator watched him with hungry and clear-seeing eyes.

But then he could pick apart things in the darkness –not well, but more than enough to fight– and he saw a hulking figure standing atop what was probably a very ornate staircase to the upper levels.

"You can stop with the theatrics." he said into the hollow, waiting dark. "I can see you."

"Can you, now?" The voice was deep, coming from everywhere at once, and resonant in a way that Vlad's had not been. Alexander recognized it immediately –Alucard. He spoke English this time around, but there was a tangible Romanian accent –either he was playing up the dramatics, or, like before, Alucard was limited to the physical properties and knowledge of this current form.

By way of answer, Alexander summoned and threw a bayonet at Alucard's head with lightning-quick speed, and he saw a flash of movement in the dark as the vampire caught it mere inches from his face –and then heard the sizzle as the consecrated blade burned into Alucard's hand, and the _clang_ as he dropped it on stone.

"An interesting mix."

Ruddy light suddenly flared through the room, making Alexander briefly squint before he adjusted to the light of multiple reddened candle flames dancing in their sockets, affixed in various sconces throughout the imposing hall. It was large and empty, but in contrast to the worn stones outside, the hall was well-maintained and free of dust and spiderwebs, with thick rugs in rich colors on the ground and tapestries of medieval scenes hanging on the walls between the candles. There was no furniture, but then, there wouldn't have been any even if this was a normal castle. The great hall was the artery through which the life of the castle flowed, and the imposing staircase –intricately carved, as expected– channeled it inwards and upwards into the depths of the building.

Alucard stood atop that staircase at precisely the midpoint, wearing the form of Vlad, with a sword hanging at his side –though he didn't have his armor. Alexander didn't have a lick of understanding on historical fashion, but given the color and rich texture, he was going to guess that the dark tunic, cape, and trousers Alucard wore in place of said armor were both decadent and expensive, which seemed to suit the personality of this age. It was Vlad, but at the same time it wasn't –he was too pale, and unlike the multihued hazel of before, his eyes were a flat, copper red. He looked somehow taller and more imposing than before, power curling cold and brutal against the ruler far more tangibly than it had when he was alive.

Alexander winced as he saw the telltale signs of vampirism. He'd known it was coming, that it would have happened by this point, but seeing the form of Vlad like this still wasn't…comfortable. It would've been easier to face Alucard in the shape Alexander knew him as, a form that had almost no vestiges of his old self. A shape free of the reminder of the human man that he had once been.

"Most hunters at least _pretend_ to be inconspicuous when approaching my castle. But here you knock at my front door, like some common peasant offering his throat." Alucard continued in a mocking drawl, descending slowly down the staircase step by step as his cape flowed behind him. "And yet you seem well-trained in every other respect. Interesting, interesting, interesting…"

What the hell.

Vlad had remembered, Alucard _had remembered what was going on before, what the bloody **hell**!?_

"If you're bluffing, this really isn't the time." Alexander growled, summoning two more blades and brandishing them to let the vampire know he was serious. He only needed to get Alucard's blood on himself, and as Alucard's sire seemed to be either not present or not applicable, he could damn well spill that blood whether Alucard wanted him to or not. Alexander could fight against Alucard as his _modern_ self, when the vampire had guns and at least another few centuries of experience –this was Alucard as a fledgling, an admittedly imposing and clearly very powerful fledgling, but a vampiric newborn all the same.

If this was Alucard thinking he was being funny, Alexander was going to have the last laugh.

And if he genuinely _had_ forgotten with this new vision…well, blood was blood, and Alexander could _take_ it if the vampire wasn't in a condition to give it to him.

Alucard grinned broadly as he saw Alexander's blades, dulled eyes shining brighter as he came to a stop. Normally, excitement of this sort would mean his form would start to dissolve around the edges, writhing shadows shimmering and flickering in the air like tongues, but Alexander was intrigued to note that Alucard's cloak was the only thing to truly change, rippling and eddying in a wind that did not exist. Another indicator that Alucard was significantly less powerful than he used to be, or rather, what Alexander was used to. That made sense: this form hadn't undergone a century of dubious experimentation in the Hellsing's basement, or whatever other refinery they had worked on him.

This Alucard might not even survive if he lost his head. Alexander made a regretful note to avoid decapitating him in the fight that was almost certainly about to ensue.

"You _dare_ come to Castle Dracula, afoot, a _man_ , to challenge me?" Alucard asked –the question might have been haughty and insulted, if not for the tangible delight in his voice. Obviously this version of him liked a good scrap just as much as the modern one.

So, it seemed Alucard was Dracula. He was _literally_ Dracula. Alexander kept a small, neat corner of his mind tucked away when he went vampire-hunting, allowing it to churn away at full speed as he focused the rest of his immediate attention on the current moment and its many combative implications, and that small, neat corner gave a wheezing death rattle as it plunged over the inevitable precipice.

He had literally fought Dracula in the past. That was going to take some mental adjustment.

But that was why he tucked that corner of his mind away, because while it was falling apart with existential questions, the rest of Alexander could focus on the fact that there was a powerful and aggressive vampire in front of him.

"I dare." he said shortly, narrowing his eyes. "And this is your last chance to back out, vampire."

 _Dracula's_ deep, cackling laughter climbed the walls like a tangible force, skittering and surrounding him in the empty stone hall. Any lingering doubts that this might still be Alucard's perverse idea of a joke were fading fast –sure, Alucard might've played along to distract or entice him into an actual fight, but the vampire wasn't so…theatrical, normally. Alexander had never thought he would say this, but Alucard was more _controlled_ than this, more precise, more patient. This was a far more dangerous and wild side to the ordinarily measured vampire that he knew: this was an Alucard that had not yet learned to pace himself when engaging with his opponents.

"I enjoy your arrogance, priest." Dracula rumbled, baring his pointed teeth in an anticipatory smirk. "And I will enjoy it far more when I take it from you."

"You aren't getting my blood, monster!" Alexander spat. Given as the ritual was already proven to be tied to blood –albeit not his– he wasn't sure he wanted to find out what would happen if the exchange was _reversed_. He could think a host of consequences, all of them unpleasant, some of them permanently so. Alexander was leery enough of vampires managing to feed off of him or his shed blood in the ordinary sense –extremely powerful ones could gain a foothold no hunter wanted them to have from a few drops– but that was doubly increased in the here and now. As demonstrated by Vlad, a few drops were enough to take effect on the ritual.

Dracula's smirk thinned, became more knowing. "That too." he chuckled.

Alexander blinked. Wait, what? What else would-

His face flamed red. Those damned "brides" that Stoked talked about in his book…

"You aren't handing me over to those hellbitch whores of yours, either!"

Dracula raised an eyebrow, descending slowly down the stairs again until he finally stood on the same level as Alexander.

"I'm afraid I'm alone in the castle, dear priest." he said.

Alexander blinked. "You don't have any brides?" he asked reflexively. More than that, though, no master? Just when _was_ this memory?

"Are you offering yourself?" Dracula asked with a suggestive leer, sliding his tongue over his lower lip, and Alexander actually took a step back. That was _not_ \- that was such an aggressive switch in personality and provocativeness that he almost couldn't believe Vlad and this vampire had been the same person. His brow furrowed as he tried to pick this ludicrous change apart: the church had always taught that homosexuality was a sin, but it was considered an _especially_ egregious sin at this time-

Right. It was Alucard. The sin was probably the main appeal.

"Have you truly never envisioned laying with a man? Never considered the power, the push and pull between two equal bodies, rather than the softness of a woman? Never imagined how it might be?" Dracula asked, grinning. Heat rushed to Alexander's face, making the vampire grin even more. "You're blushing, Catholic."

"Anyone would, at being told such filth." Alexander mumbled, trying to focus on the fact that the vampire across from him could rip his head off in a blink if he dropped his guard. The thought wasn't nearly so threatening for him as it was for an ordinary man, but the fact that Dracula would probably do all sorts of unsavory things to his body before he recovered was cautionary enough.

He wondered if Alucard still thought this same way about men, centuries later, and slapped the thought away as soon as it had formed. That was _not_ appropriate, and absolutely not something he should concern himself with.

"You're a Catholic priest, are you not?" Dracula purred, eyeing his clerical collar. "You call yourselves the pure ones that lead the rest of us to Christ, but I've _seen_ what goes on in those monasteries. A number of like-minded men, all of a similar age, locking themselves away from the wider world…humans aren't meant to be chaste, _Father_ , and inhibitions mean nothing when an opportunity presents itself."

Alexander was tolerably familiar with that –though _not_ in the way Dracula was implying, _thank you very much_. It was an unfortunate truth that the human body was designed to reproduce, which did result in inevitable occasions of lust even for those who had sworn themselves to Christ. Catholic priests…well, as sinful as homosexuality was, it was still far, far less grievous than the alternative that had arisen with the downfall of the cloistered monasteries in the modern age. While the brothers in such communities had _perhaps_ engaged in illicit activities, they were, probably, by and large consensual, between adults. With no community to turn to, truly depraved men in the modern age turned to their congregation, and of their congregation, the ones who could be bullied into keeping silent both during and after the reprehensible act. Alexander had introduced no few of those pedophiles to the business end of his bayonets, and looked forward to introducing more (though certainly not the occasions of more!) in the future.

A flick of his wrist had multiple bayonets singing through the air, clustered around the vampire's torso. He aimed them away from the heart and below the throat, which should hopefully incapacitate Dracula for long enough to collect the necessary blood. Alexander knew that the vampire had a malformed sense of pain, but he still _felt_ pain, and the shock of being riddled with consecrated blades, compounded with that, should make the vampire falter. He just needed a few moments to close the distance and touch a wound…

Dracula drew his sword quickly, sweeping most of the blades aside as he stepped out of their path and catching one in (or rather through) his arm as unholy flesh sizzled and smoked. Definitely less resistant than he used to be…or would be, technically. This damn vision was beginning to give Alexander a headache.

So, long-range attacks weren't very useful. Let's see how Dracula dealt with this.

The blade piercing his elbow didn't affect the vampire's mobility as much as Alexander might've hoped as Dracula twisted to meet him head-on, blades clashing together. Dracula was ready for the momentum and force of his body, but Alexander was pleased to feel his feet slide back just a little as the vampire's eyes widened minutely, not prepared to receive the full _strength_ of an experienced hunter.

But then the vampire's eyes narrowed again, and his teeth and fangs _gleamed_ with the width of his grin. Alexander had done it now –the both of them were intensely competitive, and it seemed that Alucard, both past and future, still loved nothing more than a good challenge. Alexander knew the feeling –the heady excitement that got his blood pumping, that burned a fire in his chest, something that sang of exhilaration and exertion combined. He couldn't get enough. Neither of them had ever gotten enough, not from each other, and each fight had seemed to spur the standards higher.

Dracula shoved him back and he flowed with the movement, flying backwards and only taking care to land on his feet and slide, knowing that that initial moment of surprise was the only good time to try and bodylock or grapple with a vampire –their strength was unnatural, and unlike humans, their stamina never flagged.

Well, that wasn't quite true. Vampires could be worn down or overpowered into exhaustion like any other creature, but that was a matter of days and weeks, not seconds and minutes, so for all _practical_ purposes, their stamina was inexhaustible during a fight.

Alexander could keep up for longer due to his enhanced body, but eventually even he would begin to tire, and there was no benefit in trying to overpower the vampire at the very beginning of the fight. If he failed, and he probably would, that would have just sapped his strength and energy even faster.

Surprising a vampire or outmaneuvering them was considered best, but surprise was generally sacrificed in the first few moments of a fight anyways, if the vampire survived the initial strike. Successful hunters understood that the odds were vastly stacked against them from the very beginning, made adjustments, and kept pace with the vampire until they were able to either pull out some trick or make use of an opening. Alexander actually favored the first approach when he could, because a number of the vampires he faced –even including Alucard, the first time they had met– hadn't heard of his regeneration abilities. He could fake a fatal hit, which generally lowered their guard long enough for him to make a second surprise attack, which almost always took care of the problem. In fact, Alucard was the only opponent of his that had survived such a tactic, but given who Alexander now knew he was, that was less galling than it used to be.

Less favored was the approach he now employed, a straight-up melee with a vampire for however long it took for the vampire to naturally drop their guard or make a mistake, at which point the hunter could strike. Given vampiric strength and speed, it wasn't exactly _doomed_ to failure, but the odds were not high unless one had special abilities, backup, or an exorbitant amount of luck, which was why it was usually a last resort.

Given how his day/night had been going, Alexander did not have much of the last two, but the first?

There was a reason he could stand toe-to-toe with what was _apparently_ Dracula. People tended to dismiss him on account of his appearance and fighting style, but the fact was, you had to be at least a little bit cerebral to fight vampires. The damn things moved too fast otherwise: a hunter needed to be able to track the lightning speed of an undead foe while also accounting for numerous other factors at the same time, such as the environment around them or the presence of ghouls.

He had barely stopped skidding before he reversed momentum and charged at Dracula again, bayonets flashing into his hands.

"Quite magnificent!" the vampire purred, shifting to meet him as Alexander's bayonets clanged off of his broadsword, Alexander working to control the direction of the larger blade via leverage rather than stop or even slow the vampire too much. "I'm going to enjoy you."

Alexander hissed and slashed his uppermost blade across the vampire's eyes. He knew what Dracula was trying to do –make him uncomfortable, fluster him with an obvious scare tactic. He'd faced that numerous times before, as most vampires knew quite well how alluring they could be to humans and also knew priests were supposed to be chaste.

God Almighty, but it was strange hearing that from Alucard, though.

Whether out of respect for Alexander's ability or –perhaps more likely- acknowledgment of the priest's stubbornness and faith, Alucard had _never_ even so much as hinted at this kind of debauchery. But Dracula, as Alexander was rapidly discovering, held absolutely none of his latter self's inhibitions. He was a ruler before he was a vampire, and it was clear that however, _whenever_ he had been turned, Vlad had long ago succumbed to the dizzying power trip birthed with his undead status, becoming a bloodthirsty, arrogant tyrant as so many vampires did.

Such a tragedy. Such a _waste_.

Alexander flicked those thoughts aside as the vampire dodged his blade, ducking under the return swipe of Dracula's sword and managing to cut into his side, briefly, before he was thrown again. Dracula was not Vlad, and pity had no place in a fight.

Though he had scored a hit with that strike, Dracula had twisted in time to make it a shallow wound only, and his unholy flesh sizzled upon contact with Alexander's blade, burning the vampire but also partially cauterizing the wound, keeping any blood from welling to the surface or remaining on Alexander's bayonet. If he wanted that, he would need to cut _deep_ , not merely leave grazes and scratches.

Bayonets clawed into his hands and he flung them in arcs of silver, and Dracula swatted and dodged, each of them slowly upping the pace attack by counterattack. At first, Dracula held his sword with easy confidence, almost negligent in a way, but the more Alexander pressed him, the tighter and more controlled his grip became, the faster his movements and the more powerful his swings –and the natural skill that Alexander faced when this man was a human had been increased by the unnatural abilities of a vampire, so that bit by bit he lost his own control, stopped holding back when he swung for Dracula as their battle raged throughout the great hall.

Rich carpets were torn apart, tapestries were pierced, pinned, and slashed by errant blades, and candles were sent sliding out of sconces and rolling across the floor, lighting some shreds of carpeting on fire and dousing themselves when they rolled across stone as light shifted and swayed in the large room. The scent of smoke began to grow alongside that of tallow and stone, and beneath all the faintest hint of old blood –and sparks flew as Alexander and Dracula raged and clashed across the room. The vampire's blade had begun to show some signs of wear, a few notches where Alexander's bayonets had struck it edge-on, and several of the priest's own, thinner blades were twisted and discarded on the floor.

Of course, despite the destruction they were both busy wreaking around the hall, that wasn't it. No, of course not.

Dracula's copper-red eyes _glowed_ , and Alexander gritted his teeth as he felt the vampire's will clawing at his own. This version of Alucard was strong –unexpectedly strong. He had forgotten to take into account the Hellsing family seals, which did more than merely ensure the vampire's obedience –they locked some of Alucard's powers. The vampire Alexander had grown used to dealing with had become accustomed to his impediments, and used them as a spur to fight more inventively, more viciously. _This_ vampire did not: he had the power and violence of a sprawling thunderstorm, not to mention the subtlety.

Ghost impulses tugged at his mind, like the temptation to step over a cliff or balcony, the urge to bend his knees and submit, a warmth relaxing and tugging at his muscles and mind like tar.

Alexander fought past those urges, a bayonet crunching through the vampire's teeth and making Dracula snarl in pain as Alexander punctured his mouth from the side. Any victory Alexander felt was short-lived, as a violent twist of Dracula's arm ripped the bloodied blade away and sent it spinning through the air, to eventually sink into the wall several meters above the ground. Not immediately retrievable, Alexander thought in the brief moment his eyes traced it, and the vampire's face and cheek reknitted quickly, leaving only a slither of blood in their wake. That, too, was quickly absorbed into Dracula's skin, and Alexander hissed in frustration.

"Am I aggravating you, priest?" Dracula chuckled, baring his teeth as their blades clashed together in another flurry of movement, and Alexander refused to deign that with a reply. That, and he needed his air to fight: the pace they had set was furious, and didn't seem like it would slacken anytime soon. Already the room was completely unrecognizable from what it had been before, despite the hall's size, and the small fires flickering over the rug would only grow as they consumed more material.

A particularly solid hit slammed him up against one of the stone walls with enough force to shatter several bones before he slid downwards, and agony burned across Alexander's body as nerves grated and shifted against one another, quickly dragging themselves back into alignment. His arms were definitely broken, his legs likewise, and the pain searing in his chest with every heaving breath probably meant that several ribs had snapped as well.

"All this pain might have been avoided if you had accepted the inevitable." Dracula purred, sheathing his sword and looking at Alexander's prone form smugly. Alexander hissed and panted, not so much out of pain –he had endured far, far worse– but out of a desire to distract the vampire's keen hearing from the sound of his bones crackling and scraping back together as they healed. "There's not a hunter yet who has lasted five minutes against me in battle."

"And is that because your bitch Master has helped you out?" Alexander growled, and Dracula raised an eyebrow, slowly striding over.

"I answer to no master, living or dead." he hummed, before smirking and languidly stepping onto one of Alexander's knees, making him wince as the corresponding leg splayed outwards with an ugly _crack_. "I can only commend your bravery, priest, but you will soon learn that the only master in this castle is I."

He ground his foot downwards, and the agony would've been excruciating if it hadn't been the first time Alexander had experienced such.

"Neither the angels in heaven nor the devils in hell can help you now." Dracula continued with a leer. Alexander answered with a smirk of his own, and sent a dozen bayonets directly into the vampire's chest from point-blank range with his healed arms.

It was a poor soldier who couldn't lose a few battles to win a war, and Alexander knew that Alucard was sadistic and arrogant enough –in any form– to want to taunt, to mock his fallen opponent. Dracula had made the logical assumption of his age and form, which was that a human with broken arms and legs would be all but helpless against him no matter _how_ strong their will or training, thus giving the vampire the assurance to approach. The urge to cause Alexander more pain and ensure his helplessness would probably be at the forefront of Dracula's mind, and so it had been –he had further shattered Alexander's leg, as well as pulled his thighs open in a pose no priest would find comfortable, especially not when his opponent had already expressed interest of a salacious nature in him.

But Dracula had also made a cardinal error, and had lowered his guard and split his attention in front of a living vampire hunter who was more than equipped to take advantage of it.

Shock registered in a split second on the vampire's leering, sadistic face, before he exploded into a chittering cloud of bats, some of which keened and fell to ashes around the bayonets that skewered them as the rest of the flock wheeled away, shrieking and flapping.

Painfully, Alexander stood up as his knee dragged itself back into alignment with a few gruesome crunches, and the bats whirled together and coalesced in a brief, fluttering humanoid mass of writhing shadows that quickly resolved into Dracula, whose expression warred between astonishment and delight as he stared at Alexander.

"Magnificent." he said in an undertone, then, louder, as his face was split in a mad grin: " _Magnificent!_ Oh, I shall _definitely_ enjoy you, priest! Will you survive if I rip you apart piece by screaming piece, until you are nothing but bloody atoms?"

"I could ask you the same thing." Alexander grunted, swiping out two more bayonets into his ready hands.

Dracula all but purred in delight, running his red tongue along his pale lips.

"I shall flay the flesh from your bones and drink the blood from your marrow." he whispered, almost to himself, as his dark cape began to dissolve and more bats began to wheel around the room. Alexander snarled as bible pages glowed in the air around him, whirling around and tacking themselves to the walls as the blooming cloud of bats writhed and screeched, fading away at the sudden upsurge of holy power.

"You'll face me on your own, vampire, without any of your damned tricks!" Alexander spat back. Alucard's familiars were another thing that had been bound by the Hellsing seals –he remembered a copied document that had mentioned Alucard being sent to Dartmoor to take care of a spectral dog supposedly haunting a noble family known as Baskerville. He and others had initially dismissed the information as a faux report, something to distract spies such as the one that had retrieved it, but now –now with Alucard confronting him literally as his legendary namesake– Alexander was much less willing to take things to chance. True, that report took place in 1901, but Alucard had died as a human man in 1476 or 1477, and if the vampire had already developed hypnosis and dissolution, he had to be at least three hundred or so years old, _or_ the product of an intensely powerful sire. The latter simply wasn't possible: the Vatican kept a close eye on notable vampires and their doings, tracking some of them down through centuries and patiently awaiting the time agents powerful enough to take on said vampires could be assembled. There was no record of any such female vampire within even the most pessimistic distance of Romania/Wallachia at the time of Vlad the Impaler's death, another reason why assumptions of his vampirism were often dismissed.

In any case, with his powers usually being locked away as Alucard, Alexander was being more than a little wary of the unfettered abilities Dracula would –or rather, could– employ.

And he was right to do so, as the powers Dracula displayed as they raged across the castle –the vampire often swiping away his holy wards to enter another room– were dizzying, a mix that seemed to defy common logic, leaping from century to century of vampiric development. Hypnotism, dissolution, yes, but also usage of his third eye, and more than that, summoning human familiars and employing hemokinesis, something only the oldest and most powerful of vampires could manage. At the oldest, Alucard could not be older than a mere three or four centuries, since Stoker's book was _published_ in 1897, and the events that it described must obviously have happened at some time prior. Dracula hadn't had access to the strange experiments of the Hellsing family, so there was some element in all this that just wasn't adding up.

Alexander was fighting for his life, however, and couldn't employ his full intelligence to untangling this problem. He'd fought Alucard countless times before, but this was nothing like Alucard: wild, untamed, feral, an assault of ever-shifting powers and abilities crashing down on him like a tidal wave in a tempest. Experiencing these two aspects of Alucard's past selves had given Alexander insight to the man that he had fought in the modern age, and he was annoyed to find that Alucard had probably been _holding back_ in some of their fights. Not always, not intentionally, but he had kept a curb on his powers and introduced Alexander to them one by one, giving him time to adjust and push himself farther, to become better, to overcome them, before throwing a new aspect into the mix.

It was like the bloody vampire was _training_ Alexander to kill him.

But Dracula? No. He didn't hold back, he shifted through his abilities in an onslaught of terrifying raw power as he sought to crush Alexander totally before him, a display that would've had nearly any other hunter running for their life –or smeared in a bloody mess across the floor.

It didn't help that Alexander kept getting distracted as they rampaged throughout the castle. He had read _Dracula_ , mostly to learn what to avoid, and he kept recognizing little bits and pieces and rooms from the novel, intensifying his certainty that Stoker's ludicrous book had actually been rooted in some kind of documented fact.

The vampire also kept up a running stream of commentary, congratulating and threatening Alexander in nearly the same breath as they clashed and ripped and tore at one another, praising him for his strength and skill and then purring all the ways he had thought to defile it. It had Alexander's cheeks frequently blushing red –he was used to Alucard running his mouth, and he was used to the vampire taunting him and trying to pick his mind apart, but this was on a whole other level. Alucard at least recognized the fact that there were some subjects to avoid, some things that would enrage Alexander in a way not conducive to making him want to fight: Dracula didn't seem to have a single inhibition in his entire body, nor any sense of ethics. He apparently found Alexander attractive, and was not shy at all in telling him so to his face, despite the fact that the priest was trying very hard to kill him.

When Alexander got out of this, he was going to punch Alucard through a wall for what the vampire's past self had been saying to him.

Beyond the quite frankly reprehensible commentary, however, Dracula seemed to be enjoying himself past his own expectations, which made sense in a way. Alexander didn't have a way to measure the passing of time, but he had been fighting the vampire for several hours at least, which was more than any ordinary human could manage, period, and much longer than most hunters were capable of. This was probably the longest and most intensely challenging fight Dracula had ever had after becoming a vampire, and possibly the most, ever, since the pitched battles Vlad had undoubtably engaged in as a living man weren't single-person duels.

Rather ironic that this wasn't even a real event that actually happened.

Alexander had fought _Alucard_ for much longer than this, before these visions.

The fight had started as a quick, vicious effort to draw blood when neither of them were truly invested, but it soon turned into a tense bout as they began to get a measure for each other, and then a frenzied battle as Alexander and Dracula pushed each other to their limits, which crept into a desperate struggle to merely survive from Alexander as the vampire began exhibiting more and more powers, but now it was creeping back into a ferocious battle of will against will, with Alexander adapting to the vampire's moves as he always had, past and present, and starting to press Dracula in return. He was the best, and there was a reason he was the best.

Down through echoing staircases that twisted and curved, with steps so steep they seemed to vanish under his heels as he was forced back, through decadent bedrooms rich with old furnishings and heavy with scents he couldn't name as they destroyed them all and left splinters and rags in their wake, across bars of moonlight crosshatched by imperfect leaded windows that looked out over the sheer drop and untouched forest, Alexander fought Dracula as sweat and blood ran down his skin beneath his clothes. Neither he nor the vampire could stop to take advantage of the wounds they opened on one another, however, too busy keeping the other away for long enough to try and strike a debilitating blow.

It was _exhilarating_.

Despite the time that had passed, despite the very real exhaustion and creeping threads of fear that tried to slink past his guard, Alexander was having _far_ too much fun fighting Alucard-as-he-was. Fighting him as a man, fighting Vlad, had been instructional but not engaging: Alexander was more than good enough at bladework that fighting a human, no matter how skilled, was a distinct setback. He had to limit himself.

 _Here_ , now, he had to draw upon wells of strength that he rarely touched, dredge up new will and energy when his limbs were shaking and begging for him to stop after hours of punishment, clash against the vampire's sword and turn back blows that would leave him open to death or worse as he tried to pierce the vampire's defense again and again, adrenaline and excitement surging thick and hot through his body. Nobody and nothing offered a challenge like this, and Dracula had yet to learn restraint or patience like Alucard had. This was a _fight_ , one like he had never before experienced.

Oh, there was risk involved here, no matter that this was a vision. They were both physical, both able to feel pain. Dracula could make good on his threats and his unholy promises, and oddly enough, the threat of that sent lightning coursing through Alexander's veins. The danger spurred him on, just as it spurred on Dracula, who had experienced more than enough from Alexander's blades and blessings to know that this strange new hunter could kill him if he dropped his guard again.

They both grinned under the threat of death, and Alexander was inextricably reminded of how Vlad had claimed that they were alike.

They were both men who used violence to serve the same faith, both men who loved the thrill and clash of battle. But Vlad, unlike himself, had fallen and become…this. Dracula was all the darkly sensual aspects of vampirism turned up to eleven –power, intoxicating power, the thing for which so many men had sold their souls– and he was leveraging all of that at Alexander in a way that made the priest feel uncomfortable in a variety of ways. Dracula had clearly grown used to indulging all of his grotesque and gluttonous whims, a tyrant king who ruled over the night in this small section of Transylvania and kept his so-called subjects cowering in the light of day. Like a fire raging out of control, he had lost himself, his mind and soul sprawling outwards with devouring tendrils towards any who came near him.

Alexander kept remembering Vlad, the worn and ragged pride in him, the feral desperation behind his arrogance, the indomitable strength of his faith, and pity kept rising in him no matter how he tried to lock it down.

Vlad was centuries dead.

Dracula was centuries gone.

This was all a living, walking memory that Alucard had succumbed to, and both of the aspects that Alexander had faced were _gone_ , gone without a trace, because he had confronted Alucard dozens of times in the present and never recognized anything from these two past selves within him.

He couldn't think on pity now, or mercy, or conflict. Dracula was a vampire and so deserved to die, as did his current form of Alucard. It was Alexander's job to deliver that final blow, as a holy servant of God, and free the soul from this tainted prison of unholy flesh. That was _all_ he should feel or think in regards to the vampire.

He would probably have to take a day or two in meditation and confession after all this.

Another thing that nagged at him was what Dracula had said about answering to no sire, and his frankly ludicrous power levels. No vampire of a mere three or four hundred should be this powerful, and Dracula was very clearly no fledgling. Presumably his erstwhile "Master" had indeed scavenged him from a battlefield, and Vlad had managed to track her down and feed shortly afterwards, perhaps even destroyed her for corrupting him. How, then, had he gotten this strong, this quickly, with no sire to teach him and no notable bloodline?

"How old are you, anyways?" Alexander panted as they circled in a room he vaguely recognized from Stoker's novel, the one in which Dracula's future brides would find their place. The furniture was shattered, as was the broad window, with jagged splinters of glass and lead hanging like teeth from its twisted edges. Dracula had hurled him right through it, but a quick use of his bible pages had gotten him back into the room before he fell too many feet.

Dracula smirked, his once-rich velvety tunic hanging in tatters around his muscular chest.

"A full two hundred and ten years dead, priest." he purred, deep voice curling through the room. "Curious, are you?"

Only _two hundred_?

Alexander was more than a little taken aback by this.

"What in the hell happened to you?" he muttered absently, staring at the vampire with furrowed brows. Dracula chuckled softly.

"I suppose your mind cannot encompass such blasphemy." he said, eyes glinting lazily at Alexander. Neither of them lowered their blades, braced and ready for the slightest movement from the other. "There is a certain pleasure to be found in defiance of divinity. A thousand last curses hurled against God…I'm sure the wailing peasants that called you have told you enough of my deeds in this region."

They'd done no such thing, but given the result several centuries after this, Alexander could guess that Dracula's presence was not kind to those within his sphere of influence.

"They didn't call me." he said shortly, panting and trying to get his thousandth second wind back.

"Indeed?"

Something seemed to occur to Dracula, and he straightened a little from his braced, defensive posture, drawing himself up –though he did not lower his sword or ease his combative stance.

"You have demonstrated skill beyond any hunter that has faced me yet." the vampire said slowly, narrowing his eyes at Alexander. "Yet you have never once attempted to sever my head. Not even at the beginning, before I began to discomfit you."

"Filthy lecherous bastard." Alexander automatically shot back, his face reddening. A grin twitched at the edge of Dracula's mouth, before it faded into a contemplative line.

"All the same, priest, it is a strange omission." he continued thoughtfully. He considered Alexander for a moment, then smiled. "You are not trying to kill me with genuine malice."

"There's plenty of malice, vampire." Alexander insisted, his lungs finally not aching for air anymore as he straightened up a little in turn.

"You have not attempted to truly destroy me." Dracula countered with a smirk. "Why? I swear to you, warrior to warrior, that I will not attack while you explain. You've earned a respite. Tell me your purpose in my castle."

Alexander sighed.

"I'm here to drag you kicking and screaming back to the present, if I have to." he snapped. "Your name is Alucard, _and you've remembered this before_. None of this is real, vampire! It's a vision! A memory of your past engineered by a holy relic! You spilled your blood on me before to fix it, remember?"

Dracula looked at him, then burst out laughing incredulously.

"You were Vlad III Dracul, Voivode of Wallachia in life." Alexander barked, making Dracula stop laughing abruptly. "You used fear and terror to drive back the Ottoman Turks from your land by impaling them on stakes."

Several microexpressions flickered across Dracula's face, before he settled into smug confidence.

"That is something a canny historian may know." he pointed out, and Alexander frowned.

"You looked like you do now, but your eyes were hazel, and you always had a cross, in armor or without." he said, trying to dredge up his memories of Vlad's appearance, small things no historian would have noted or remembered after so many centuries, but things Dracula would know. "It was small and silver and undecorated, and you had it on a cord around your neck."

Dracula's smile faded as doubt replaced confidence.

"Past scrying." he said quietly, though with a trace of hesitance.

Alexander glared at him. "This castle is by the Borgo Pass in Romania, or Wallachia, whatever the country still is, and you plan to travel to England, eventually –within a few hundred years. You're learning everything you can out of books, which is how you know English to begin with, and when the solicitor gets here to aid your purchase, you plan on having him correct your accent."

More doubt crept into Dracula's expression.

"I had not planned quite that far yet." he said, eyes sharpening as he looked at Alexander. "How do you know of this?"

"Because you _did_ do that." Alexander snapped, throwing caution to the winds and assuming that Stoker actually had copied down most of his book verbatim. "You came to England, were caught by hunters, and enslaved to a vampire-hunting family, and they use you to hunt down other vampires. Which is how you know me to begin with, you weak-minded hellspawn! Alexander Anderson! Iscariot! You know those names and I know you _know_ those names, because you recognized the names of your Master and fledging before when you were human!"

Dracula blinked.

"By master, you mean the one who turned me into a vampire?" he said slowly.

"I mean the one who holds the leash to your seals." Alexander said, waving the back of one hand in indication. "Integra Hellsing."

"Ah. For a moment I thought- but never mind." Dracula shook himself, not unlike a dog, and moved to sheathe his sword. "Your words ring true, priest."

Alexander withdrew his own blades, but remained wary. "So do you remember like before?"

"This has occurred more than once?" Dracula asked, raising an eyebrow and dashing his hopes immediately.

Alexander swore, making the vampire grin.

"There are better users for such a filthy mouth, you know."

"Oh shut up." Alexander growled. "So you remember the present as vague impulses?"

"Indeed." Dracula said, looking at him with interest. "And the past as I always have, but since I remember nothing of you in it, I can only assume you shared a similar memory with my mortal self."

"Hmm." Alexander grunted in acknowledgement, rubbing a hand down his face. "We deduced that the relic of Saint Anthony, after being charged by a vampire for a ritual and coming into contact with your blood, dragged the both of us into a vision of your past. Vlad said that it might be because the vampire who originally tried to enact the ritual was looking for something."

_Or divine intervention to save his soul._

He didn't say it, and the thought made him uncomfortable, but judging by Dracula's raised eyebrow, he didn't need to say it. Dracula was Vlad –or had been, after all, and knew quite well what his past self might've thought and said to a priest sent by a relic.

Then Dracula grinned, and there was something predatory in his expression again.

"You know Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things and of seeking them, yes?" he said in a velvety voice, striding forward as Alexander's hackles immediately went up and bayonets shot into his hands.

"Yes." he said, watching the vampire prowl forward until they were nearly nose to nose.

"He also helps women seek their husbands." Dracula purred as Alexander went red. "Was there something you felt for my future self that you did not admit to anyone? Now is as good a time as any to enact it…there's no one here to witness, after all-"

Any further such pearls of wisdom were silenced as Alexander plunged a bayonet into his throat and kneed him in the groin, sending the vampire staggering back with a gurgling roar of laughter.

"I swear to Christ I am going to _neuter_ you!" Alexander snarled, hands wrapping around the comforting handles of his weapons as even more sprang into existence. Dracula smirked at him as he removed the sizzling, hissing bayonet from his neck with one hand, smoke rising from both hand and throat.

"It seems my future self has been tamed somewhat." he said wryly as he dropped the blade. "I would have had you on your knees and begging for me within our first few encounters, priest. I rather think your blood would taste exquisite…amongst other things."

The corner of Alexander's eye twitched. Apparently, just as Alucard had still retained the mannerisms and language of Vlad after he had recovered himself, he also still retained the mannerisms and cruel, predatory behavior of Dracula right now.

"I would rather take you in literally any other form than this one by this point." he snapped, hands clenching around his bayonets. "Are you going to shed blood voluntarily, or will I have to rip you open for it?"

Dracula hummed, eyes raking him up and down slowly, making sure Alexander could feel it as the vampire undressed every inch of him, before looking up to meet his eyes again with a smirk.

"I suppose I shall have to hope my future self loosens his control." he purred, digging his fingers into the half-healed hole in his throat as dark red blood oozed out. "And I shall have to hope that he enjoys you _thoroughly_ in my place."

Alexander really, really didn't want to think about the images that called to mind, especially when they made his pulse jump. Vampires were inherently sexual in nature and _damn him_ Dracula was exerting every bit of that hypnotic influence on him right now.

"Blood." he hissed thinly, and flinched when Dracula flicked it directly at his face.

"You have a very strong will, priest." he chuckled, though Alexander was busy focusing with relief on the familiar glow that was slowly overtaking them. "I regret that I was unable to enjoy it for longer."

The world went white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Transylvania, 1687_ :  
> This time is not really relevant in any Dracula adaptions that I know of, but it is roughly halfway between when Vlad the Impaler was killed and when the events of the book take place.
> 
>  _What kind of woman Alucard's sire had been_ :  
> Alucard's very clearly not a virgin, and he was never bitten by anyone, which are two direct knocks against the canonical vampire-turning method in the series. It's clear that becoming a vampire the same way he did is _possible_ , as it almost happened to the Major before he…rejected the blood?…but it's never clear just how predominant that category of vampire is to begin with. Since there is _only_ Alucard, I'm assuming it's a highly esoteric process that requires a very specific and very rare set of random circumstances, and even then, as the Major did, the human in question can end the transformation before it completes. Ergo, no hunters automatically think of it as the reason for turning, even if they're vaguely aware of the process like Anderson is.
> 
>  _I've seen what goes on in those monasteries_ :  
> By a number of accounts, there was a nonzero (potentially large) percentage of people that took holy Christian vows and went to monasteries and nunneries in medieval Europe solely to avoid getting married and to kinda-maybe-sorta hang out with all these other like-minded men (monastery)/women (nunnery) in a community isolated from common medieval society. You know…for reasons. Wink wink. Obviously they didn't explicitly _say_ it was for gay reasons, and not all holy orders were thinly veiled excuses for LGBT people seeking sanctuary from their society, so it's a bit hard for historians to pin down how prevalent or even how blatant this was or was not. There's certainly multiple records of people being punished for it/told to avoid it.
> 
> Also there's the eternal quandary of "did people do this because they were _actually_ homosexual, or because humans are randy bastards that _will_ have sex at the first opportunity they can convince themselves to take and these were all-male/all-female communities…?"
> 
>  _Alexander had introduced no few of those pedophiles to the business end of his bayonets_ :  
> I saw someone mention once that one of their unrealistically optimistic headcanons about how things work in the Hellsing world was that, rather than shuffle pedophile priests around to a new diocese or something when the issue crops up, someone from Iscariot comes to take them the _fuck_ out. I feel like Anderson would endorse this approach on multiple levels, since pedophile priests are harming children (which he would hate), abusing their authority (which he would hate more), and acting in direct contradiction to their role as God's servants (which he would probably hate most). He killed one of his adoptive children for serving power instead of God, can you _imagine_ the horror he would wreak upon someone who was doing the same but that he didn't have any emotional ties to.
> 
>  _Castle Dracula_ :  
> Disappointing research news, apparently Bran Castle has absolutely nothing to do with either Vlad the Impaler or Dracula. The castle described in the book Dracula also doesn't exist, and even its location is infamously tricky to pin down. According to the Dutch author Hans Corneel de Roos, Stoker _probably_ meant the castle location to be an empty mountaintop in the Călimani Mountains, about 20 miles southeast of the Borgo Pass. Stoker also probably _based_ Castle Dracula off of Bran Castle, appearance-wise at least, because Bran Castle was and is an infamously pretty/atmospheric example of its type. Look up a picture, it's amazing.
> 
>  _That report took place in 1901_ :  
> The Hound of Baskervilles story is _set_ in 1889, but that would actually be ten years before Alucard was grabbed by Hellsing, if we assumed it happened in the same year _Dracula_ was published. The story itself was published from 1901 to 1902, hence the shift in dates.
> 
> Also, I don't mean to slam on Stoker quite this much, but if we assume that the Dracula book in Hellsing canon is identical to the real Dracula novel, there is SO MUCH that he got wrong.


	4. Carfax Abbey, London, England, 1897 CE

* * *

__

_Love…  
We can love each other._

__

_It seems I will go crazy with thirst._

__

_I close my eyes, and give you a kiss deep in sins._

__

_Your scent makes me go mad  
Waking in the midnight, I drink up the madness of love._

* * *

Alexander had honestly expected to remanifest back in the basilica, perhaps with a slightly disoriented Alucard right in front of him. Failing that, he expected to manifest during or after Alucard's capture, when the seals had warped and changed his being. After all, what else was there for the ritual to catch onto?

Apparently, it caught onto a dark and dusty vaulted room, thick with the scent of mildew, candle wax, and old incense.

The vision filled itself in quickly this time, manifesting almost before he did, which indicated that Alucard was very close. Alexander saw that it was still night, whenever or wherever this was, and that he was standing inside what seemed to be an old chapel, medieval in style, without a gleam of natural light anywhere, although a suggestion of brighter space above indicated at least the presence of arched windows and an open sky, and a few candles flickered in the air on tall candelabrums ranged around the edges of the room to give the place _some_ illumination.

_Damnit._

Well, wherever this was, it definitely wasn't the Hellsing estate, and Alexander frowned, shifting in place: he seemed to be standing in the middle of the room. He could tell that this was an old church, but the holy ground seemed to have been deconsecrated in some way, leaving only a fading sense of security and a sense of absence where holy power should be.

"I extend my apologies, Father, but Carfax Abbey is no longer a place of worship."

The hair on the back of his neck prickled at the familiar voice –still with a Romanian accent, but the accent was fainter, now, almost gone– and Alexander turned around to see someone standing near but not too near to one of the tall candelabrums, the dim light of the candles leaving most of the vampire in deep shadow. From the shape of the body alone, though, it was obvious that he was no longer wearing the form of Dracula: this was the leaner, taller shape of Alucard, though Alexander doubted he went by that name now. Other details were hard to pick out: the feeble flames of the three wax candles might be able to reach the other man's dark, formal clothing, but their light was seemingly absorbed by it, leaving a frail glow to just barely indicate where the vampire was standing on the other side of the hall, presumably near a door.

"A place of the worship of the damned, maybe." Alexander muttered, and there was a pause, before a deep, rumbling chuckle echoed throughout the empty hall.

"Perhaps not such an ordinary priest, after all." the vampire said, stepping closer out of the shadows. Alexander caught a flash of his eyes, no longer a dull copper but a brighter rust-red, though they still weren't the vivid crimson Alexander was used to. Alucard's hair was longer as well, falling down over his face in a silky curtain. Still, it was the face that Alexander knew, and that in itself was odd as the vampire took one of the tapers from the candelabrum, turning to methodically light a series of other candles laid out on a nearby table in pools of their own wax. "Forgive me my poor illumination, but I don't entertain many visitors."

Alexander snorted. He had no doubt the vampire entertained plenty of visitors –he just didn't care if they could see or not, since they would shortly be devoured anyways. The backs of his white gloves were bare, meaning that the vampire was free of Hellsing control and could feed unabated. Alexander had little doubt that he did.

Still, a few immediate differences presented themselves as wavering yellow light grew in the room. This form of Alucard was already more patient, more subtle than Dracula, less inclined to attack an obvious enemy and more content to wait, to draw out his purposes and intentions.

He was also interested to note that the outfit Alucard wore was fundamentally unchanged from his current form: charcoal-grey suit, obnoxiously large red cravat, white gloves. The only real change was the fact that he wore a high-collared black ulster rather than his modern garish red duster, and that his fine black hair straggled down over his shoulders in a way that Alexander recognized from when the vampire's modern self was loosening some of his powers and controls. At least it wasn't seething with shadows and centipedes and the Lord alone knew what else…for now.

"So, Father, allow me to introduce myself." the vampire said, turning to him with a faint smirk. "I am Count Dracula, visitor to these shores and admirer of its people. Who are you, and what brings you to my lonely home?"

"I'm an old enemy of yours." Alexander said with an annoyed huff, without much hope that it would snap the vampire out of his memory-induced haze. "The one who will kill you."

The Count's eyes dilated in what seemed to be unconscious delight, before his smirk grew a little and he brushed aside his automatic response.

"Announcing oneself to a vampire in such a fashion is hardly the act of an enemy." he noted, stepping forward to slowly circle around Alexander. "A competent one, at least."

Alexander revised his estimate upwards as he turned, keeping the vampire in view. Unlike Dracula, the Count was already more calculated, more thoughtful, and he guessed, given the name of the building that they were in and the implicit few centuries which would have passed, that it was due to the novelty of undeath having worn off by now. The vampire was starting to actually experiment with his power rather than just mindlessly sate himself, which was probably why he had come to England to begin with. Stoker had never really made that clear…

"That's because none of this is real. You're caught in a vision of your past." Alexander snapped, plowing onwards doggedly. "We've been over this before, twice, and I'm in no mood to repeat it a third time, since these hours are probably passing in the real world too and I've already been here for a few days at least!"

The Count raised an eyebrow, still circling.

"And just what sort of "vision" is this that has supposedly entrapped us both?" he asked.

"Something from the relic of Saint Anthony. You and I theorized, in your past forms at least, that the ritual was meant to pull the vampire through various stages of their life." Alexander said, then scowled. "But what I don't understand is why the vision was caught on _this_ time, this memory. Before the divisions were obvious: you as a man, you as a vampire. You're still a vampire now, and you haven't even changed your name. So why in God's name am I still _here_?"

The Count shrugged as he came to a halt, facing the priest. "Perhaps this is your memory, not mine." he suggested with a wry tilt of his head, and Alexander snorted.

"I'm old, but I'm not _that_ old. What year is it? 1890-something?"

"1897." the Count said slowly, looking at him with slightly narrowed eyes.

"Then this is all you, vampire." Alexander said, folding his arms and glaring. "You don't look like you did before, so-"

A bout of laughter from the Count interrupted him.

"Appearance and shape hold no meaning for me." he sneered, demonstrating this as shadows wove through his being and he shifted and resolidified into several versions of his current and older self, eventually ending on Dracula. Alexander didn't react beyond an impatient huff at the sight of this older form, making the vampire raise a thoughtful eyebrow as he shifted back to his form of the Count. "Perhaps there is some truth in what you say, of seeing my past."

"Maybe it's true that you can take nearly any form you like." Alexander replied, gesturing at the vampire as his ulster seethed and settled back into its old shape. "But you still _reverted_ to this one, and it was what you were wearing when you saw me. It's your form of this age, just like that last form was the one you wore after you died, and it was the one you kept reverting to after shifting _last time_. You keep coming back to a central shape, and this isn't the shape you wore in the last vision. Given as that's the _only_ change, it has to have _something_ to do with why I'm stuck here with you."

The Count hummed contemplatively, looking at him for a long time.

"The shape or form are irrelevant to me." he said at last. "But you are correct in saying that my most constant appearance is…affected by my current state. The form that I most commonly wear is one that is chosen by my current expression of myself, what I feel best suits my mood and identity, and expresses these things to the unknowing masses."

He placed a hand over his chest, tilting his head a little with a smile as he looked at Alexander.

"I am no longer in my body of Vlad Dracula, because I am no longer in my native Transylvania. It was the shell of my old self, and like a caterpillar into a butterfly, I have shed every vestige of that which I was, and shed my old face alongside it. I have evolved."

The vampire stepped even closer as Alexander's hackles rose, the Count now looking him up and down with interest from less than a foot away before he resumed his circle, walking slowly around an ever-turning Alexander, like a cat prowling around something it had not yet identified, eyes raking every inch of him.

"If what you say is true," the Count continued. "Then these visions must not only hinge upon my past self, but my times of key metamorphosis. They have shown you myself as a human, as a vampire not yet fledged, and now a vampire seeking further evolution."

That made sense, unfortunately, which made Alexander scowl, since he was almost certainly going to go through more…evolutions, after this, since being captured and tamed by Hellsing was _definitely_ going to be a learning curve for Alucard's past self. Oh, well. It was 1897 –only a hundred or so years before Alexander had actually met the vampire as his modern self. Even if Alucard changed every single decade, there were only so many permutations Alexander would have to run through.

"So the blood is the key because the blood is the vehicle of the soul." he said aloud, quoting an oft-used piece of vampire lore as the Count smiled faintly.

"Indeed. I would even hazard a guess that restoring my memory of my modern self –which you seem to have been attempting– may not even be necessary." he replied. "It is the act of obtaining my consent and understanding as my current self when the blood is spilled which allows the vision to proceed."

"Essentially overwriting the self that you are now, right?" Alexander said, still turning and watching the vampire narrowly as the Count circled him. "Your current state unlocking itself with willingly given soul-currency."

"Exactly."

"If that's the case, then with you _understanding_ the situation now, all I need is your consent and your blood." Alexander said, making the vampire come to a halt with a slow smile.

"True enough. I, however, long for a _challenge_ , Father." the Count said, his eyes flashing brighter as he bared his fangs in a grin, stepping back. "You know me and my business here? If you desire my blood, then you must _catch_ me."

Bayonets shot into Alexander's hands as he snarled at the vampire, who came to a halt a few meters away. "I won't let you go hunting innocents for you own damned sense of amusement, even if this _is_ nothing but a vision!" he spat.

The Count grinned wider at Alexander's challenge as his hair began to waver and drift into glowing red shadows, his form seething and uncurling at the edges.

"Oh really, Father?" he asked in a predatory purr, eyes lighting with unholy glee. "And how are you to _stop_ me, you with your weak human powers?"

Alexander's answer came in a flurry of glowing pages that tacked themselves to the walls, forming a barrier around the vaulted chapel as the Count's writhing edges slowed and solidified, a flash of disappointment and slight surprise crossing his face before he mastered it into his usual smooth confidence.

"I see you are truly a priest indeed." the Count murmured, looking up at the yellow sheen that skated across even the rafters of this old building. "Very well, then. I won't set the challenge by leaving victims for you to find."

"Or killing anyone." Alexander said.

"Or killing anyone." the vampire said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. Nevertheless, something in his posture and tone made Alexander glad he had included that rule, vision or no. "None shall meet their deaths by my hands tonight, nor any other part of me. This I so swear."

Alexander narrowed his eyes.

"You think I'd trust _you_?" he asked skeptically. The Count gave him a haughty look.

"I swear on my honor that what I say is true." he said, then smirked a little. "More than that, I swear it on my _blood_. Is that an oath any vampire would break?"

Slowly, cautiously, Alexander flicked his bayonets back into his sleeves, and listened.

"I will drift through London, and if I destroy anyone, it shall be another vampire." the Count said. "If you can find and catch me before I return to Carfax Abbey, I will give my consent in spilling my blood."

"What part of the abbey?" Alexander asked, wary. "The house, or the grounds?"

The Count hummed, giving him a long up-and-down look. It was far less predatory than Dracula's, more measuring and thoughtful, and the vampire was smirking when he looked up to meet Alexander's eyes again.

"You seem ill-suited for an extended run." the Count said, eyes glittering with taunting amusement. "Once I enter the grounds, you must concede defeat."

"And then what?" Alexander asked, a slight warmth rising to his face as he remembered all the things the Count's past self had suggested. However measuring that look had been, it had still reminded him of Dracula's…impulses.

The vampire shrugged. "You shall stay here and endure." he said carelessly, then smirked. "These visions may indeed equate to real time, so you might very well be caught up in my past for a hundred years or more. The thought amuses me."

It didn't amuse Alexander, which was probably why the vampire found it funny to begin with. He was already in the range of 300 years, so another century of waiting was probably _nothing_ to him. Alexander, on the other hand, had a human life and human colleagues to get back to, not to mention what would happen if the vampire's visions collided with the moment where they had met or when the ritual had activated. The Lord –and some highly technical research scientists– only knew what would happen then, but Alexander doubted it would be pleasant. Quantum entanglements of that nature rarely were.

"Fine." he said warily. "You'll leave the area and I'll chase you down. But I need a better outline than that, vampire –for all I know you would step outside the grounds, then immediately swerve past me and dive back in."

He doubted that the vampire actually would –Alucard was a lot of things, but he was also a slave to his own sense of amusement. There was no point in playing a game if one broke the rules, and the vampire, at this stage, was experienced enough to understand that no hunter would engage with him unless he made it clear that he would respect certain basic premises. He also –at least as his modern self– liked giving his opponents a chance, seemingly so he could take all the more unhallowed joy out of kicking them into the dirt once they had exhausted all their abilities.

So, as odd as it sounded, the Count had actually been genuine in his offer of a challenge, and his implicit obedience to the laws of the challenge as set. He wasn't going to try and deceive or catch Alexander in some perverse loophole –oh, the vampire might try to trick him _during_ the chase, but that was during a battle of wits and strength between them. Trickery was basically expected.

It was a strange thing to see Alucard as fundamentally _honest_.

"Thirty seconds of a head start, and I shall run to the Thames before attempting to return to Carfax." the Count said, pulling him out of his thoughts. "That will ensure your chances of winning, no? And if you do not catch me by…shall we say, sunrise, then you must concede defeat. Does that sound fair?"

"Fair enough." Alexander said immediately, making the vampire blink a little. "What time is it now?"

"Just past sunset, providentially."

Alexander smirked as the vampire began to grin in turn, the bible pages sliding off the walls and returning to him in a hurricane of paper as the holy barrier went down.

"Fine then, vampire. You've got yourself a hunt."

The Count cackled with pleasure and whisked away as a blot of shadows, obviously intent on maximizing the advantage from his head start. Counting the thirty seconds as they went by, Alexander took a moment to settle himself, rolling his shoulders and exhaling slowly.

His clothes had all healed from the shreds and tatters inflicted on them by Dracula, and none of the residue from the past visions seemed to affect him at all –the blood and sweat hadn't carried over, leaving him in the exact same state at the beginning of every new memory.

Physically, that was.

Mentally, Alexander had already undergone many hours of dealing with the vampire, and he hadn't seen the sun for most of them, ever since it had set over Vlad's castle in the very first vision. His soul craved light and warmth, but as always, Alexander tucked that away into a neat corner and let his other instincts flow free. Though the vampire was not attacking him deliberately, this was much the same effect as a haunted house or a possessed quarter: the rules of this place were warped and twisted, and they drew you down into them, absorbing you in the methods and quirks of this strange location, until all your discipline was gone and you were left a gibbering wreck, twitching to the tune of _its_ will and whims, and not your own. It drained your attention, distracted you with unnecessary details and emotional jolts, until the exorcist in question was too disoriented to fight back as the will of the haunting drew close to them and consumed them.

He needed to focus.

One by one, Alexander drew his emotions close and shed them, dropping each to the floor like a second skin. He deliberately set aside his mental weariness, letting go of his stress and thus the physical effect it had on him –he had worked longer and harder than this before on hunts, no matter that he had been awake for over twenty-four hours by now, and fighting for most of them. He set aside the buzzing, frantic wonder and curiosity over what Alucard was and what he had been that had been humming in the back of Alexander's mind ever since he'd seen those impaled bodies –they were all questions that could be answered and looked into later, when he had escaped these visions. He took his pity for the corrupted man of the faith that Vlad had been and set it aside, let go of his anger over what Vlad had been forced to become. He pushed his sense of mercy, his sense of ethics into the back of his mind, letting only the things that would help him on an active mission bubble to the surface: fierce, unyielding faith, bloodthirst, and raw intelligence.

It was time to hunt.

* * *

Unlike normal hunts, Alexander had an advantage here, in the sense that these visions were focused on Alucard and reality itself grew foggy and vague outside a certain radius centered around him. It wasn't foolproof, of course: that circle of "natural" space was in constant flux, depending on where the vampire was. In buildings, it shrank narrowly to the vampire's direct line of perception –sight, hearing, and so on– whereas in open spaces it was much wider, covering the corresponding larger area of the vampire's awareness. This bubble of concentrated reality also wasn't easy to track: things became clearer the closer to the center that Alexander got, of course, but the signs were often subtle, especially when the vampire was either very far away or very close.

For instance, when Alexander teleported himself to the roof of the abbey to recon, whatever natural breeze there would've been on such a night had devolved into a constant hush of rising and falling wind, unnatural and never-ending, a background noise that had merged into the background and had no effect on the gloomy trees and bushes scattered around the large grounds of the estate.

Damnit. He hadn't bargained on such a wide swath of ground around the abbey –the vampire would have a lot of ways to slip past him, unless Alexander caught him far, far away from the estate proper.

He smirked in the darkness. Hunting vampires was his specialty, after all.

First off, although the Count had said he would go to the Thames before returning, the vampire would naturally be averse to lingering around that much running water, and he probably wouldn't go into any of the neighborhoods encircled by the curve of the river, where he could be trapped against the banks if Alexander pressed him hard enough. According to Stoker's book –the events of which couldn't be too far off at this point– Dracula would still have a problem with running water, unable to get across unaided, whereas he had already shed many other vampiric weaknesses: able to shapeshift, walk in daylight, conjure familiars, and all the rest of it. Supposedly, blessings and holy items still affected him, and he could only fully shift at certain key hours of the day, but Alexander was disinclined to take too much of Stoker's book as gospel. The man had claimed such an old vampire was killed merely by decapitation with an unsanctioned blade and piercing through the heart with another, both things that wouldn't even have destroyed a ghoul, never mind a centuries-old vampire in an enraged frenzy, and knowing what Alexander now knew, there were other obvious gaps in the work, not to mention blatant lies, since it claimed Dracula was dead.

Secondly, if he knew Alucard in any form –and he did– the vampire wasn't going to treat this like a quick relay race to "tag" the river and then come surging back to the finish line again. No, he would treat this as a _game_ , something to draw out and enjoy. First he would try to test Alexander by hiding and slipping away, see what he was made of, and then, upon witnessing the strength and holy power the priest wielded, draw Alexander out into a longer, protracted hunt, enjoying the opportunity to whet his own skills on a worthy opponent. At that point he would start taunting Alexander, driving him to more and greater displays of skill, teasing him with glimpses of the vampire before fleeing, pushing the challenge higher and more exciting for the both of them.

So the hardest part would be at the beginning –actually showing his mettle by tracking the vampire down. Alexander didn't put it past the Count to try and fool him by not heading for the river immediately, instead lurking around some obscure part of London, but that was where his slight advantage came in –he could find out roughly where the Count was just by looking around.

Grabbing a nearby spire of the decorative roof, he strained his eyes and his height to their limits, scanning the dark London night for any sign of greater clarity. The people, horses, and carriages going down the street outside the grounds were mere blurs, suggestions that made more sense out of the corners of his eye, and every last flickering flame that had been lit to guide their way, on carriages and inside shops, over lampposts and in hands, waved back and forth with haunting regularity. The vampire wasn't close by, on any of the three sides Alexander turned to. He wasn't even over by the other building and grounds Alexander saw on the fourth side, which was almost certainly the sanitorium of the Doctor Seward mentioned in _Dracula_.

It was very strange, being in the middle of what crossed the line between fantasy and history for people like him. However outlandish _Dracula_ had been, parts of it had long been acknowledged as true, and now, with _this_ …

Alexander shook those thoughts away. He had a vampire to hunt.

So with the vampire not in the immediate area, he had to look to the horizon for clues, trying to spot areas where the fires that served as light in this old city seemed… _normal_. Flickering as fire should, rather than in a steady, mechanical rhythm.

 _There_.

An area to the south, where the lights seemed normal, and the vague chatter and bustle of a working metropolis seemed natural, a pinpoint sphere of reality unlike the rest of this blurry world, which faded into formless black when he looked in the other direction, like a dream.

Unsettling, that was, but it gave Alexander a place to start. He vanished in a swirl of bible pages, then reappeared in an alley at the edge of that clear zone, not wanting to give the vampire a chance to sense his holy power and flee.

Looking out into the street, it seemed that the Count was probably part of a large swirl of Victorian men and women going about their daily business –or rather, an echo thereof. Still, the detail was precise enough to seem real, and Alexander swept his eyes out over the crowd, making sure the vampire wasn't actually _here_ , before cautiously joining it. A problem of his extreme height –he topped six feet– and muscular build was that blending into a crowd like this, even if he had period-appropriate clothing, would've been nearly impossible, just as it frequently was with the modern equivalent.

Still, there were ways and clues and methods for doing things.

Despite the powerful allure crowds provided, for both prey and escape, vampires were rarely found _in_ them –in the thick of them, anyways. The press of people too close on every side, the likelihood of an errant brush causing someone to notice their deathly cold bodies, and in this day and age, someone seeing unholy red eyes and sharp fangs: all of these things meant that being in the heart of a crowd was too risky. Vampires almost always skulked around the fringes, rather than plunging in directly.

But the allure of so many living souls was impossible to resist, so like wolves sizing up particularly oblivious sheep, they circled around the _edge_ of the crowd, lounged in socially-appropriate vantage points to run their eyes over the flock of humanity and decide which particularly appetizing morsel to snatch. In a thriving street setting such as this, a vampire would be lazing around one of the shop fronts, or strolling around the edge of the stream of people, or –at this time of night, when most other eyes were blind– even perched on a building, watching them from above.

Even in situations like this, when the Count knew he was being pursued, he would still be very averse to immersing himself with the rest of the crowd. He moved too differently, too smoothly, and pushing through them in a hurry would leave a trail even the most incompetent of hunter would easily be able to follow. To the practiced eye of a professional hunter like Alexander, in a crowd of humans, a vampire stood out just by existing, and his prey probably knew that.

So the Count would be gliding from some kind of vantage point to another, keeping on the lookout for Alexander as he oozed through the great metropolis. He'd likely weave _through_ the crowds a few times, just to mix up his trail and change direction, but he wouldn't linger in them too long.

Which brought Alexander to the second key point of spotting vampires in a crowd: the dark. Being nocturnal, undead creatures, vampires gravitated to the dark just as humans did towards the light –give them an empty road and a lit streetlamp, and a lone human would move to stand beneath the lamp, just as a vampire would draw away to the other end of the street. They instinctively moved towards where they could see the best, and for a vampire that was being hunted, that meant the dark, quiet, untouched places humans would be loathe to venture: crypts, caverns, forgotten alleys, and even sometimes abandoned houses.

In London, especially the London as of now, the Count would probably be drawing close to those hidden and shadowed corners, areas like the East End where people were drunk and depressed and drained of life, and killings could go on unabated –it was only a decade after the infamous Jack the Ripper had stalked those same streets, after all. Vampires thrived in such places, where people were easily missed and there were plenty of places to scuffle, rat-like, in shadows that were themselves unseen by wider society.

So, knowing what he knew, it was easy for Alexander to watch for those shadowed doorways and hidden corners, glance ahead for key vantage points before stepping further down the street and keeping an eye out for areas that seemed especially vivid. The stink of the old city enveloped him, the scent of leavings both human and animal swirling in the placid night air, but the memories of the people that had walked these streets seemed unaffected, some men smiling and lifting a hat to him as women gave the barest nod and then hurried onwards.

Inexorably, the streets grew dirtier, and Alexander's trained nose twitched as the smells of various poor men and women living in squalor began to overpower any other scent. Just as he'd thought, the Count was gravitating towards an area he probably already had experience with as he made his leisurely way towards the river, knowing that Alexander had a whole city to search and, with a full half-minute head start, that he had far outstripped the priest ages ago.

Just as he thought that, Alexander saw a startlingly bright ribbon of blood curl out from a particularly dilapidated alley, glistening in the light of a nearby lamp, and hissed under his breath. The few battered souls (or rather, the memories of them) that were about at this hour passed by the pooling stream of blood without a glance, stepping over or even through, in some cases, without any apparent interest, but he knew better.

Not willing to risk startling any of these vision-people by drawing steel and having them alert the vampire with their cries, Alexander rushed to the mouth of the alley, stopping with surprise at what he saw there in the shadows.

It was the Count with what was obviously another vampire, whose sickly pale face was tilted towards the entrance with his fanged mouth agape, red eyes vacant but expression twisted with fear and helplessness. The Count's face was buried in the other vampire's neck, dark ulster sprawled around the both of them as the Count half-pinned, half-held the other vampire to the wall. Alexander had evidently arrived at the end of his feed –with a sharp jerk of his head and a muted _crunch_ , probably the sound of the second vampire's windpipe being crushed, the Count let go and stood, leaving his victim to sprawl where he lay, hardly even noticing that Alexander was there. The glistening red spray across the wall, the blood oozing towards the alleyway entrance, and the flow dripping down the Count's chin told their own story: the attack had been as sudden as it was brutal, and as careless as it was violent. The Count had done this because it amused him to do so, not because he actually wanted to feed, so that –as he had told Alexander– he could add another element to the challenge by leaving victims for Alexander to find.

Still taking no notice of the priest, the vampire's long, unnaturally flexible tongue flicked out, carelessly scrawling across his lips and chin as he licked the blood away.

Alexander swallowed. He couldn't put an exact name to it, but there was a strange sense of something…alluring in that sight, a feeling of wonder, or perhaps admiration, as there was when he saw any powerful force of nature at work. It was the same sense of awe as when he saw a climbing mass of dark thunderheads sprawling across the sky, haloed with desperate edges of the sun and shot through with lightning…or when he saw the ordinary, clean, natural predation of a wolf hunting with its pack. Something both powerful and graceful, doing the work that it was shaped to do with precision and confidence.

He didn't feel anything himself, of course, but perhaps, for a moment, Alexander… _understood_ the fascination some people had with vampires.

The Count seemed to come out of himself, blinking and shifting to look towards the mouth of the alley. He smirked as he saw Alexander there.

"So, Father, do you enjoy this little present?" he said with amusement, indicating the body at his feet with a flick of his eyes. "A token of my appreciation for this hunt."

Alexander's face felt slightly warm, and he scoffed to shake those strange half-formed feelings away. "I've found you already, vampire, and you're making jokes?" he sneered.

The Count grinned. "Ah, you've found me." he agreed smugly, eyes glinting. "But have you _caught_ me?"

With those words, his shadowy form exploded into a whirling cloud of bats, which spun upwards like a cyclone to flee, chittering, across the night.

Alexander, left staring up at them, swore in frustration, and hurried off in pursuit after casting an absentminded bayonet through the fallen vampire's skull. Vision or not, he was trained to be thorough.

* * *

As he'd expected, once Alexander had proved to the vampire that he actually could keep pace, the Count both simultaneously started and stopped taking the hunt seriously. He treated it like a bizarre, haunting game of tag, often letting Alexander just barely get close enough to touch him before whisking away with a cackle of delighted, slightly mad laughter. That initial dead vampire wasn't the first Alexander came across, nor the first feeding he witnessed: the Count seemed to be on a rampage, cutting down vampire after vampire where he found them and leaving the bodies for Alexander to find. It both thrilled and worried him: worried him due to the implicit nature of the hunting the Count would've _otherwise_ been doing. Alexander had had to push to keep the vampire from repeating this same sequence on human victims, and Alexander knew very well that all of this was a vision, a reflection of reality –a reality where he had not been there to stop the vampire from slaughtering his way across Victorian London. Dubious historicity of Stoker's book aside, Alucard had to have drawn the attention of hunters _somehow_.

The hunt thrilled him because, well…the hunt always had, and there was something oddly exhilarating in chasing the vampire down, when the Count was using his powers to the utmost without fear of intervention from the Hellsing seals. It was pure in a way, clean, a challenge between the two of them directly, with absolutely no one and nothing else willing or capable of interfering. It was, in a perverse way, oddly like those paintball games his orphans liked to play: combat and the thrill of battle without the risk of injury or loss. Even if the Count _had_ been ripping apart humans, they wouldn't have been real _people_ , but Alexander's enjoyment of this chase still would've been tempered by the guilt he felt over enjoying himself while innocent victims were being slain.

But this? Pure, predatory bliss.

He was having an odd amount of fun, watching the vampire hunt as he stalked him in turn: the Count had indeed evolved, a smoother and more practiced predator than Dracula, slinking and gliding easily across the Victorian night and leaving blood and corpses in his wake. The Count's greater control didn't mean that he had stopped giving free reign to his urges, merely that he had honed them, giving himself the best out of every opportunity to eke the least little enjoyment out of his prey. Alexander frequently interrupted his voracious feeding, and the sight of the vampire with dark red blood dripping from his face and that black sprawled ulster became nearly as familiar as the Alucard the priest had known before, with shorter hair and brighter eyes. His flesh still steamed and smoked when Alexander got in a lucky hit with his bayonets, but it was notably less –the Count had already gained greater resistance to blessings and alloyed silver, though not the near-immunity that Alucard demonstrated.

Flitting through the shadows and light of this old city, weaving through humans here and killing with blood there, Alexander hunted the Count, and there _was_ something pure, something clean in the dance they made. As juvenile as it sounded, they were both having _fun_ , both enjoying themselves to the utmost as they strived to demonstrate their greatest powers and cleverest tricks. An odd thread connected them, an eagerness to both show off and to enjoy the other's demonstrations, like two children playing together. More than ever, Alexander was reminded of how much the seals actually held down the vampire's power in the future: he had seen Alucard "hunt" before, if hunting was what his near-businesslike missions constituted, and it was _nothing_ like this.

The Count moved with the power and grace of an apex predator, flowing from attack to retreat seamlessly and without pride, grinning all the while as he drew Alexander further into his games. He was ruthless ferocity incarnate as he tore open lesser vampires, one after the other, disposing them with a careless arrogance that spoke more of his power than all his abilities combined. Every move was smooth and calculated, every moment of predatory grace effortless and deliberate, and _tame_ was another word Alexander would _never_ have thought to associate with Alucard, but seeing how the Count hunted, how he hunted as Alucard naturally would, free and unhampered by the Hellsing shackles, served to drive that point home very well. Compared to the Count, Alucard _was_ tamed: tamed, fettered, and lesser.

Alexander caught himself almost wishing the Hellsings had never taken him for a moment, and quickly stopped himself. The damage the vampire could wreak –probably had wreaked, in the past– meant far more than the strangely awe-inspiring way that he hunted. Alexander had seen plenty of vampires stalk plenty of humans, and yes, none of them had done so with such feral skill, but that was exactly why Alucard was a _threat_. He was, in a very real way, the best of them all.

Still, shameful as it might have been, that didn't stop him from enjoying the hunt as they worked their way across nearly the whole of London, occasionally startling civilians away like flocks of birds when one of them grew too impatient or too brutal, letting him forget the stress and the aggravation of the Count's other two past selves and just _be_ for a while, be himself, be the Alexander Anderson that was the foremost agent Section XIII had ever known and the best foe Alucard had ever faced. The vampire had told him as much when Alexander had so nearly pinned him in Trafalgar Square, and given what Alucard's next century looked like, Alexander doubted that that would change. He was the _best_ , and given the length and, it had to be said, the infamy of the vampire's career, that had a warm glow of sinful pride burning in his chest.

Eventually, unfortunately, it had to end. Dawn was drawing close –he could tell as much from the clocks, when he and the Count passed them– and the vampire was already looping back closer to Carfax Abbey. Still, Alexander hadn't spent what was at this point _over twenty-four hours_ of dealing with the vampire directly with nothing to show for it: he had learned more about Alucard, and Alucard's way of doing and fighting, than he had in all the months he had known him.

It wasn't sophisticated, but a ring of bible pages created a barrier the vampire couldn't pass through, and tackling him into the street and shoving a bayonet against his throat kept the Count from interfering with the barrier for long enough to escape, which he had been able to do as _Dracula_ , never mind his current form.

"I've got you." Alexander panted, his chest heaving up and down from the flagging adrenaline of the chase. He had never felt so alive, but he wasn't about to jeopardize everything he'd worked for by allowing the vampire to slip away. "And it's before sunrise."

"So it is." the Count noted, looking up at him from the ground with an unperturbed expression. He then cast a glance down over his chest and the blade imperiling his throat. "This position is remarkably suggestive, if I might add."

Alexander glared at him and shifted forward, so that he was straddling the vampire's stomach rather than any other part of him. "Your older self was a lot more obscene in attempting to distract me." he said with a huff, and the vampire smiled broadly, sharp teeth glinting in the faint light of a nearby lamp. The street was deserted, and likely to remain so, given how desolate this neighborhood seemed.

"Not a distraction, I assure you: merely an observation." he said languidly. "I doubt so fearsome an opponent would be distracted by mere perversity. I assume my past self suffered for such a tactic?"

Alexander grinned without remorse. "I nearly gelded him."

"An experiment I hope you will not be inclined to repeat."

"You haven't given me a reason…yet." Alexander replied as his breathing finally began to even out, noting the Count's lack of concern despite the possibility of such a debilitating injury. Well, he _could_ regenerate, so that wasn't nearly the threat it would be for a lesser man. The Count smiled, and his expression was simultaneously so Alucard and so _human_ that it shocked the breath out of Alexander.

"And I hope I never shall. Watching you at work was a marvel, by the by." he said.

"You…" Alexander began, before suddenly becoming acutely aware that saying _'You too'_ was the complete antithesis of what he should be saying to a vampire, particularly _this_ vampire. "…were impressive in your own way, I suppose."

The Count seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.

"There's no shame in admiring my abilities." the vampire hummed, red eyes hooding slightly. "I am something powerful and singular, a calamity in motion, a river of death. It's when humans begin to _covet_ what I am that we have issues."

"Don't I know it." Alexander muttered, making the vampire chuckle softly under him.

"Ah, as a hunter you must've seen much of that." the Count said wryly, starting to grin again as his rust-colored eyes twinkled. "And slain much of it too, I'd wager."

Alexander huffed in reluctant amusement.

"You didn't seem to have much of a problem with slaying other vampires yourself." he said, and the Count shrugged beneath him, shoulders moving against the old brick of the road.

"Should I not? I am a predator, with all that that entails." he said carelessly.

" _'Anything weaker than me is prey.'_ " Alexander murmured, and the vampire grinned broader, all of his teeth sharpening to sharklike points.

"And I have seen is nothing yet that is my equal." he purred, then paused a moment to consider, glancing over Alexander's face. "Except perhaps you."

Alexander's face felt hot, and he abruptly realized, again out of nowhere, that he was sitting atop the vampire and having to what all intents and purposes amounted to _a civil conversation_ with him. Quickly, he jerked away and stood up, making a trace of confusion flit across the Count's face before he shrugged to himself and stood as well, shaking himself off fastidiously from the implied taint of the road.

"In any case, I caught you. Deal's over." Alexander said quickly, still holding his blades at the ready. "You owe me blood, vampire."

The Count gave him a long, strange look.

"What?!"

"You are a very competent man," the vampire said at length, slowly. "But I still hesitate to say that you are a true enemy."

"I'm a member of Iscariot." Alexander shot back furiously, glad for the opportunity to defend himself. "The greatest vampire-hunting agency in the world! When I meet you next, vampire, you are _dead_!"

The Count hummed a note that seemed to have agreement and skepticism mixed within it.

"Wanting me dead is perhaps a different thing than declaring yourself my true enemy." he said, smirking a little before it dropped behind a shadow of memory. "You have seen my past lives, yes? Perhaps you feel pity for the me that was, when I was human."

"You're out of your damn mind, vampire. I don't feel _pity_ for a monster like you."

Except maybe he did, more than was healthy, which was exactly why he denied it so vehemently. It wasn't his place to cast judgement on history, but Vlad the Impaler had been…monstrous. Perhaps not _a_ monster, but certainly many of his deeds had an element of inhuman cruelty to them. History could and did discuss why, and many people had even struck on the reason Alexander had learned, speaking with the voivode straight to his face –he was a desperate man, perhaps already cruel and warped, but willing to do anything to defend his people and his faith from an overwhelming threat, even become a monster of such brutality that his infamy lasted down through the centuries. Alexander also couldn't help remembering that shocked, haunted, fearful look when Vlad had learned what he would become, the automatic rejection and then the melancholy defeat and glimmer of hope as he looked at what he viewed to possibly be a savior sent by God.

So Alexander pitied Vlad, and he pitied the Count that would soon lose his power and everything that gave him this macabre spark of animation now. He didn't pity Dracula, but even then, he felt a detached sorrow for the echo of the man that he had been, the depths that he had sunk to.

The Count sighed and shook his head a little.

"In any case, I will welcome your attempts in the future and feed off them." he said with a smug little smirk, which showed a glimpse of his fangs. "I enjoyed our chase tonight, but something tells me that the both of us have not yet shown all we can do."

That was true enough –Alexander hadn't been actually aiming to kill the vampire at any point, and he knew that whatever might happen with the Hellsing family in the future, they had also enhanced Alucard's abilities greatly. Neither of them had been facing the other at full strength, not yet.

"You can try, _Count_ , but you haven't been able to defeat me yet." Alexander said with a returning smirk. They grinned at each other in a silence that felt oddly companionable, before the Count lifted his white-gloved hand, squeezing it into a fist briefly as his nails pierced through fabric and flesh and blood soaked into the palm.

"Blood of the past self, freely given." he said formally, then held out his open hand with a grin. "I wish you luck with my future selves. May all your fights be as glorious as tonight's hunt."

Alexander huffed at the bizarre image of shaking the vampire's hand, but accepted it nonetheless, squeezing their hands together as chill blood seeped into his own glove and light began to glow around them. The Count's hand was cold and strong, like a machine that had been inexpertly wrapped in some kind of padding, but then, surprisingly, he adapted to Alexander's strength, easing up and relaxing into what might've been a human grip, if not for the chill.

But then that, too, was gone, and all the world with it.


	5. Holmwood Estate, London, England, 1899 CE

* * *

_Come here, into my arms.  
"The darkness over there is bitter."_

_You are a flickering illusion._

* * *

The first thing he saw was familiar, and all the more shocking for it.

It was the Hellsing mansion.

Oh, granted, it wasn't _quite_ the same, with many of the little details and improvements of the modern age left out, but it was still unmistakable. He'd seen enough surveillance photos and been to enough meetings to recognize the building immediately, even though it was still night, and a brisker night than the one he had left –probably something tending towards autumn, or perhaps spring. That was one of the things he disliked about England: it was winter-cold without the winter snow. Perhaps a childish grievance, but one his orphans had passed onto him firmly: winter was snow, and snow was winter, and a winter without snow was…lacking.

Still, at least the route the vision laid out for him was easy, for once: given the time and place, he knew _exactly_ where the vampire was. Alucard was down in the basement, whether being tamed, or already tamed and awaiting his next orders, Alexander wasn't sure. That was the thing about these visions: while they undoubtedly hooked into times of metamorphosis for the vampire, they weren't _exact_ –Alexander had not seen the actual event of Alucard's turning, for instance, and both of his experiences with Alucard's past self as a vampire had been multiple decades, even centuries after the changes had taken place.

He didn't know if the shift in time was intentional, or a result of the ritual being combined with a vampire that it was not meant for, but that was irrelevant. This was the Hellsing estate, and Alucard had only one place within it: down in the shadows of the basement where he belonged, the family's dark little secret and their fiercest hunting dog. That was really the only way you could treat a vampire under your command, but Alexander still felt oddly…uncomfortable as he climbed the steps to the main doors. Perhaps it was just discomfiture at the idea of slavery: Alucard was a vampire and monster, well enough, but one person having that kind of power over another was an inherently uncomfortable idea for _anyone_ with a spec of ethics in their brain. It was proof of the Hellsing family's indomitable will that they kept said empathy from letting the vampire manipulate them into freeing his bonds.

Still…

He had to wonder thoughts he was unaccustomed to wondering, things like how well Alucard was treated in the day-to-day of his unlife. Watchdogs were sometimes kept on the edge of starvation, to ensure their hunger made their savagery all the more intense when they caught a stranger in their master's domain. Just because Alucard was valued didn't mean he was treated well, _especially_ in this generation, he noted as he looked at a plaque beside the door that said this was not the Hellsing but the _Holmwood_ Estate, right out of _Dracula_.

Well, now he knew why Hellsing kept the records of just where they had gotten their titles and estate so scrupulously secret. Whether Arthur Holmwood had given the titles and lands to Abraham Van Helsing out of gratitude, or if the exchange had happened some other way, the Hellsing family both past and present had obviously been keen to distance themselves from Bram Stoker's work. A ruse was useless as a ruse if there was actual documented proof of their ties to the fictionalized case, and while the implicit awe and fear Sir Hellsing stirred with her vampire's not-at-all-subtle alias was something the family was keen to keep, back in these days, when there was a chance victims of Dracula's rampage were still alive to give testimony, all ties to the case were probably obscured and buried beneath layers of recursive fiction.

Alexander wondered if he would see Abraham Van Helsing or any of the other infamous hunters on his way down to the basement.

He didn't, and it was probably better that he didn't, because illusion or not, having to deal with the old man's suspicions would have been an annoying waste of time. Thankfully, despite the very real mental fatigue weighing down on him right now, Alexander was oddly free of the actual urge to sleep and eat, giving the whole experience yet another dreamlike quality. It was worse than the blurred faces and the smudged horizon: he had experienced every one of these long waking hours naturally, and yet despite his weariness he didn't feel the urge to sleep. It was simultaneously annoying and alarming: if he got tired enough, he would start to slip mentally, make poorer calls and perhaps lose his edge when it came to reflexes and timing.

Hopefully, he wouldn't have to batter the vampire into submission this time around.

Following contextual clues, Alexander made his way to a semi-concealed doorway, and after wincing at its size and thickness –perfect for blocking out noise from beneath– he slowly pried it open, revealing a long flight of stone steps that plunged down into the earth.

Alexander had prepared himself for roars of rage and defiance, a rattling and crashing of chains as the defeated vampire fought his bonds, a deafening series of unearthly wails and chitters as Alucard tried to unsettle his captors, and was thus very, very unprepared for the silence.

Utter silence, not the fearful trepidation of a vampire in their domain, but the quiet, melancholy silence of a tomb, where no emotions held sway and everything slept beneath a coating of dust.

The priest's fingers tensed where they rested on the soundproofed door. He didn't like this…

But Alexander didn't have to like this. With a stern mental shake, he stepped around the door and down the stairs, descending with the help of oil lamps lit at regular intervals along the walls. Their light seemed bright and false against the stifling, all-consuming silence, a cheery and futile insistence that there _was_ light and life, down here in the stony silence of a crypt. He didn't like that either –highly attuned to atmosphere, as all good hunters had to be, the atmosphere of this place was giving him a bad, bad feeling.

This was the generation that had caught and tamed Alucard. What, exactly, was he going to find at the bottom of this staircase? Plans of the estate had included a "dark arts laboratory," a specimen room, a torture chamber, _and_ a dissecting room, and all of those things did not bode well for the vampire he sought.

It wasn't like Alexander _cared_. But he also wasn't comfortable with seeing Alucard tortured and in pain. In a strange way, it seemed like a greater intimacy than everything he had already seen: he had known Alucard's past as a human, as his arrogant younger self, but those were merely facets of the vampire's personality. Seeing what would be a moment of supreme vulnerability felt _wrong_ , like he was impinging on something private and personal.

Alexander had never once, in all the time he had known Alucard, ever seen the vampire in actual _pain_ , or torment.

And he didn't need to.

Everything else so far, all that could be leveraged against the vampire, could be studied and picked apart in his mind after this was all over, but the idea of seeing the vampire writhing and screaming in pain repulsed Alexander on some level. It wasn't necessary. Just as it wasn't useful to see other moments that were also highly private and personal –Vlad with what few family members he had been fond of, for example, or even Dracula engaging in perversity with his brides– Alexander didn't need to see _that_. It served no practical purpose.

Somewhat to his relief, when he got to the bottom of the stairs and slowly proceeded down the hall, looking into open doorways at the various work rooms, there were all empty. Oh, they had been _used_ , and recently: dried blood caked many of the man-sized restraints, and its subtle dark, flaky quality let Alexander know that the blood had come from a vampire and not a human. Some of the discarded tools on various benches or hung on racks also dripped with ichor, making several of the rooms he passed look like medieval torture chambers. The instruments were heavy, clumsy, but brutally efficient in their way, and despite thinking of the numerous people Alucard must have killed before being imprisoned here, Alexander was having an increasingly hard time clamping down on his pity. He had killed people, too, and he definitely never wanted to end up in a place like this.

At least in the Vatican science labs, he had consented to most of the procedures, and the equipment was kept up-to-date. The echo of frenzied, howling screams seemed to be caught in the walls of every room down here: this was a place of blood and pain, and a nightmare for any creature that could heal and thus reform new tracts of flesh for others to torture.

Eventually Alexander came to the end of the labyrinthine basement, and found a cell at the end of a row of them, tucked away as though its inhabitant was meant to be forgotten by everyone and everything: as if to eliminate all doubts, a number of holy wards were scribed all around it in blood, silver, and other, more esoteric things.

Opening the broad metal door without strengthening or dealing with them in any way would have been monumentally stupid if Alexander hadn't been more than prepared to fight the vampire in any state and also capable of regeneration: if he could go toe-to-toe with Alucard's older forms, he could certainly deal with a vampire no doubt weakened by loss of blood and lack of exposure to his coffin.

And so it was, because Alucard's coffin was nowhere to be found in the blank, featureless stone room, empty except for the vampire and the bonds that held him. A square oil lantern dangled from the midpoint of the ceiling, flickering with a soft yellow flame.

Alucard had changed again: though he wore the face and form Alexander was used to, his hair was even longer and thinner than before, reaching down past his waist in an unbroken flow. The vampire also being in a straightjacket was, if not _exactly_ what he expected, natural enough, though the fact the thing was made out of black leather and had far more straps than necessary made Alexander feel a trifle uncomfortable. It looked like bondage gear, not that he had _any_ specific knowledge of what that was supposed to look like. The vampire's hands were also chained above his head, stretching out his arms, rendering the extraneous straps extra unnecessary.

The vampire's eyes were closer to the color Alexander was used to, as well: though traces of molten orange still remained, they had nearly completely turned a striking bright red, but what struck Alexander the most was the complete blankness in them and Alucard's expression as the vampire silently lifted his head to look up at the priest.

He didn't try to move, even though his legs were free and he could definitely at least pounce at Alexander if he tried. He didn't bare his teeth in an instinctive bid for intimidation. He didn't even flinch and shy away from the sight of a holy man who was presumably here to continue where Van Helsing had left off, and that in itself was somehow even worse than the vampire's lack of aggression. He was a No-Life King, but Alexander had never seen the vampire so completely _lifeless_.

"How long has it been?" he asked into the expectant silence. "Since you were captured?"

The vampire blinked slowly.

"If it is still 1899, then two years." he said without inflection. Alexander noticed that his Romanian accent was completely gone, though the vampire had yet to acquire the vague American accent of his future.

Somehow the lack of expression as he said that short number hurt even _more_.

"They broke _you_ in two years?" Alexander said with a scoff. "I don't believe it, vampire."

"I'm not broken."

Alexander cast him a dubious look.

"Of course," he sneered. "You thought it would be _fun_ to hop into those manacles and onto that dissection table and let them have at you. I know your sense of pain and pleasure is more than a little skewed, vampire, but even _you_ are not that much a masochist."

Something flickered in the vampire's eyes, so quick and so vague that Alexander couldn't identify it before it was gone.

"Is it so strange to believe that I allowed them to do so?" he asked placidly.

Alexander inhaled sharply and drew a hand down his face. Its- this was just _wrong_. The vampire shouldn't be so numb, so lost. His pity raged like a wildfire in his chest, and he had to channel it into fury before he said something he would regret.

"So you let Van Helsing and the others torture you, cut you apart, experiment on you –Lord knows what else, I can only guess from the records!– and you _don't care!?_ " he asked furiously, incredulously. "You didn't fight people trying to rip you apart? _You_ , of all people!"

The vampire showed his first signs of emotion after that explosive shout, giving a low, bitter laugh as he dipped his head.

"Oh, I tried, at first." he admitted. "Oh, how I tried. But eventually I realized it was all so…"

The vampire rolled his head back on his shoulders, leaning it against the stone behind him, between his upraised arms, as he looked vacantly up at the ceiling.

"…pointless."

"Pointless." Alexander said, trying to forget how exuberant and powerful the vampire had been just a few years earlier.

"Did the Master tell you?" the vampire asked, still looking at the ceiling without focus. "I attempted to lay waste to London, and through it England, bring all under my dominion as I had with my native Transylvania. I failed. The Master pursued me to my home and destroyed my dominion, my castle, all that I had and all that I was."

He blinked slowly, even though he didn't need to, as a trace of melancholy suffused his face.

"And yet I realized, even if he had not, where would I be now? I had grown increasingly tired of easy conquests and rampant feeding in my home: nothing offered challenge, nothing was new. I came to this island for that purpose, and yet if I _had_ managed to subjugate London, England, the whole world even, it wouldn't have changed anything. I would be as I was before the Master came, able to drink as much as I could hold, do whatever I pleased."

The vampire made a sound low in his throat.

"Why is it agony, to have everything that it is possible to have?"

Alexander winced. That was, in the philosophical sense, the very worst part of vampirism –immortal unless directly killed, every vampire would, sooner or later, plateau. Their gradual climb of powers would stop, but more than that, eventually the vampire would have achieved and done everything that it was possible for them to do. There would be nothing new, nothing different. _Forever_. How long it took a particular vampire to reach this point varied, on account of personality and opportunity, but it was a peak that every immortal being would eventually reach.

The vampire shifted his arms as he looked back down at Alexander, rattling the chains against the cold stone.

"Being enslaved cannot be worse than this emptiness I feel." he said with the ghost of a wry smile. "At least it has the value of novelty."

That –that right there– was at last the missing piece that Alexander had been unconsciously searching for ever since he had met Alucard, and _especially_ since these visions had begun. The vampire was powerful all out of proportion to his age, even before the Hellsings had caught him –so how had that old man, with what was by Stoker's account an inexperienced party of allies, caught him to begin with? Ideas had been tossed around, both by himself and by some of his colleagues, ranging from tricks to traps to magical might, but it seemed Alexander had finally found the answer.

It wasn't that the vampire had _let_ himself be caught –that was cheapening the obvious effort and sacrifice of Van Helsing and the ones who had helped him. No one was so vindictive as to construct the scenes Alexander had witnessed without reason.

But the vampire had definitely let Van Helsing _keep_ him. Aside from the strength and determination he had undoubtedly showed, Van Helsing had also been obscenely lucky, catching the vampire at the exact time that he had begun to consider filling the emptiness within his soul in a new and novel fashion.

Alexander also suddenly wondered, as the vampire watched him placidly, if Mina Harker had had anything to do with the abrupt despair and depression he witnessed from the vampire. Interpretations of _Dracula_ had wondered if there was something more between them…and she obviously hadn't been freed from the vampiric curse by Dracula's death. Dracula was still here, sitting forgotten and lost within a basement.

But that wasn't something Alexander was going to ask the vampire, not now and possibly not ever. Failed relationships hurt, and he wasn't so ugly as to pick at _that_ kind of wound.

"I've seen a lot from you, vampire." Alexander said after a moment, knees cracking a little as he bent down. "Cackling, powerful, unhinged, perverse…"

He sat beside the vampire and leaned his back to the wall, hands in his lap, legs spread outwards alongside the vampire's.

"…but I never expected to see you like this."

The vampire looked over at him, expression still dull, but something of curiosity shining within it.

"Lost?"

"Blank."

The vampire hummed a note of acknowledgement, and Alexander tensed in surprise as he leaned against him, head nestling against the crook Alexander's shoulder and neck.

"W-what the hell are you doing?"

"You're warm. It feels pleasant." the vampire murmured drowsily against his collarbone. "Everything else in this basement is as cold as I am."

"Van Helsing has to have used silver on you at least once."

"That's not a pleasant warmth. This is pleasant." the vampire said, almost like a petulant child, then sighed quietly. "This is one of the one things I have missed, down here in the dark."

"Warmth? Life?"

"Touch."

Alexander felt his face warming again at that one. Each separate version of Alucard seemed determined to embarrass him in a different way –Vlad with revelations, Dracula with obscenity, the Count with camaraderie, and now this. He wondered what each of them would think of the vampire leaning against him now, quiet and placid, seeking a vague drift of comfort when he didn't even know who was offering it or what they were doing in allowing him to do so. Perhaps he thought he was dreaming –it couldn't have been easy even for a vampire to sleep upright like this.

But this vampire was not the one he had encountered already: that was why he was here, after all, because this was a time of metamorphosis for Alucard, a time in which he changed from what he had been to something else, something new, something that the vampire perhaps still carried with him into the current day. Everyone had facets of their past selves within them…even Alexander. Alucard, being a vampire, was just so damn old that his past selves actually had different faces and adult personalities.

Oddly, Alexander didn't feel an urge to pull away from the vampire, even at this invasion of personal space. It _was_ cold down here, and for the moment, he was glad to take this opportunity to just _rest_ , free of any taunts or fighting from the vampire at his side.

It was a long time of _being_ , when he let go of any thoughts about the right and wrong of what he was actually doing right now and just let himself drift, nearly dozing. He even went so far as to close his eyes, and had a feeling the vampire was probably doing the same, greedily soaking up the warmth and pulse of life from the man drowsing beside him.

Letting go and being, together in this patient silence, was oddly intimate. It loosened Alexander's tongue when the stray curiosities about the vampire beside him eventually came floating back to the surface, and he actually asked a question that he had been thinking on for some time.

"What do you prefer to be called?" he asked quietly.

"Alucard. The Master has said so."

Alexander's forehead scrunched in irritation.

"Putting aside what he told you to call yourself." he muttered. "That's a name you've been using for what, two years at most? You've got other ones. Older ones. Ones you used for much longer. Dracula? Vlad?"

"Those names are meaningless." the vampire murmured, not stirring from where he leaned against Alexander. "The men who owned them would not recognize me if they saw me now."

It was still uncanny, hearing how the vampire's thoughts paralleled his own.

"So what name do you think of yourself as?" Alexander asked with some surprise, opening his eyes.

The vampire huffed quietly in amusement.

"I'm _dead_." he told Alexander, still in that careless murmur. "Why should the dead need names? I have no identity of my own: identity is for the living. I am an unnatural, parasitic existence that feeds off of other creatures, draining their lives to form myself –a sentient curse against God, given form and shape, an UnDead plague upon this earth. I have nothing. I am nothing."

"You have a personality, reprehensible as it may be." Alexander snapped with a fierceness that surprised even himself. "You have memories, you have a _self_ , and therefore you have an identity."

The vampire laughed, and in it was an echo of his earlier, familiar madness.

"What do _you_ know of my memories, holy man?" he sneered, though still not moving from his place leaning against Alexander, as though the priest would have to force him away.

"I know that you were a man of God, when you were alive." Alexander said immediately as the vampire went very, very still. "That you were willing to give everything you had, everything you were, into protecting your lands and people. I know that you carried a small silver cross with you everywhere you went, and that you were skilled with a sword. I know that after you became a vampire, you kept a castle in the mountains, and the lands around it were beautiful even in winter. I know that you lived in it alone, without a Master. I know that you _used_ to love nothing more than a good fight, and I know you used to be fascinated by the idea of a challenge."

The vampire's head jerked up, pulling away to look at Alexander's face with searching eyes.

"Who are you?" he asked quietly, eyebrows furrowed.

Alexander hesitated.

"Someone from your present." he said after a moment. He wasn't so cruel as to kick the vampire when he was down in the deepest depression Alexander had ever seen. "Someone who knows you well."

The vampire tilted his head in thought, red eyes tracking over Alexander's face.

"Are we enemies?"

The corner of Alexander's mouth twitched mirthlessly. "I'm someone sworn to kill you, at any rate." he said with a huff.

The vampire paused, then smiled and leaned back down against his shoulder.

"Ah." he murmured, a world of understanding in his voice. "So you are someone who loves me."

Alexander blushed fiercely.

"That's- its not- why do you associate that with _love_?" he asked incoherently, dragging a hand down his reddened face.

"It would take an intense, passionate, focused will to see me slain." the vampire replied, eyes closing languidly again. "And you have pity and understanding of what I once was. Is that not love?"

Alexander tensed as the vampire idly nuzzled against the crook of his neck.

"Please don't do that." he said tightly. He wished it could be because he was afraid of the vampire biting him, but whatever Van Helsing had done, such aggressive actions were clearly not on the agenda –and the vampire stopped when Alexander said that, humming a note low in his chest.

"Ah, yes. You are a priest, are you not?" he said quietly.

"Mm-hm. I'm not…used to people saying things like that to me." Alexander said, shifting a little where he sat on the cold stone.

The vampire shrugged.

"My soul was damned when I became UnDead." he said carelessly. "I have no such compunctions."

Alexander hesitated, then cautiously went forward with the most loaded question yet. This had been a steadily growing thought behind all of these visions, remembering Alucard as he was, and how he would be, and in the strange, quiet, isolated intimacy of them sitting side by side, he felt as though he could finally voice it.

"Why did you become a vampire?" he asked softly.

The other man was silent for a long, long time. Then his chest gave that familiar heave and jerk –every breath the vampire took seemed like it was the precursor to something new and important, his chest rising dramatically –but that wasn't it at all. He didn't _breathe_ , he had been dead far longer than he had been alive and had probably lost the habit decades ago, and his chest was perfectly, mechanically still except for that initial inhale that drew in air so he could speak. Alexander had watched for that subtle but sudden, shocking movement numerous times over the course of their fights, knowing that it was likely the precursor to some foul taunt or mocking encouragement.

It was odd, seeing it now, in such a different context.

"I became what I am through the old ways." the vampire said quietly. "Complete renunciation of God."

The hair rose on the back of Alexander's neck. Complete renunciation –this was yet another precipice of something infamous and unknown, a cliff above all those possibilities hinted at in ancient texts. It was an idea so old and esoteric it had never been confirmed as _possible_ , and yet, here was proof, sitting beside him in a dungeon. A vampire unlike any other vampire, born from a personal curse and not an unholy infection. Something with a power and nature beyond and unlike anything any hunter had ever faced.

"You didn't even have a sire." he breathed quietly, half in wonder, half in awe.

"Just so." the vampire murmured in agreement.

Alexander wondered what that moment had been like, when the vampire had awoken for the first time. Had Vlad been confused? Furious? In despair? Most vampires had a sire, a Master to help them through those first few moments, and even when they didn't, even when their sire abandoned them, they at least had a psychic connection, a sense of support, an anchor. Vlad had been completely and utterly alone.

"How did it happen?" he asked.

The vampire made a slightly mournful, bitter sound, an echo of a betrayal and a pain that ran so deep that not even centuries of unlife could erase it.

"Ambush on the road." he said, voice growing distant as he looked back on his final living moments. "All those that followed me were killed, but I was the voivode. Special consideration was needed…an execution."

Alexander shivered, from the cold of the undead corpse leeching into his side.

"I remember being dragged through a land of corpses, seeing a scene from Hell itself." the vampire murmured reminiscently. "They hung from trees, they were piled in mountains on the ground, they created a forest of impaled and broken spears. The air was thick with the stench of blood and death. My retinue that had fought beside me, the Ottomans we had slain, the peasants of the land around us, their towns and villages that were all aflame. All dead."

"And then?" Alexander asked cautiously.

"I felt despair. I felt rage. I had sacrificed my all, my everything to God, and in the end I had nothing. I was to die alone, and all I had done was to be in vain. The godless Turks would take my lands and my people would fall before them." the vampire said, an echo of his ancient rage stirring in his voice. "And to make sure I knew of this, they gathered their army before me as I was led to my execution block."

Even as a bystander, even as someone just hearing this story, Alexander winced. For a man of faith, in an age when _all_ he had was faith, when he had lived a life fractured by war and rife with betrayal, that must have been a numbing experience indeed.

"That was the natural way of things." the vampire continued, taking him aback. "A sacrifice had been prepared and offered to a higher power, but then I blasphemed."

"You blasphemed?" Alexander said with a huff. "By what, not letting the Ottomans kill you?"

"Everyone in that scene of Hell had died for me." the vampire said softly. "They died for what I believed in, for what I told them to believe. They died for me, but I had consecrated their blood for God. In my last living moments, I spat upon His name and took the blood for myself. Is that not blasphemy? I cursed God and consumed the sacrifice that had been prepared for my own, rather than leaving it to Him –the blood of those who had died for the vision I pursued."

"And that was how you became a vampire." Alexander said.

"Because I took more than my fair share, I was cursed to become Nosferatu, the UnDead, caught in an eternal state of emptiness and unnatural life because I had defied and perverted the laws of nature in my final moments." the vampire told him calmly. "It's not enough to slaughter others, nor is it enough to merely curse God. You must blaspheme to such an extent that the Almighty itself turns it's back on you."

"God is a being of love." Alexander told him after an uneasy moment.

The vampire huffed bitterly. "God's love may be infinite, but His mercy is not." he sneered. "Do you not punish your children when they stray? I took that which was not meant for me, and in return, everything has been taken from me."

Alexander fell silent, making the vampire huff quietly, still leaning against him in an attitude of repose with shut eyes.

"You asked." he said.

"I know." Alexander replied. "I just…"

He trailed off, making the vampire give an inquisitive noise.

Alexander sighed heavily and rubbed his face.

"I wish I could've been there, on that day you died." he admitted after a moment. "To stop you, to help you, or at least be with you when you died. Dying like that…no one deserves to die like that. Not even you. But I'm…conflicted."

"Why?" the vampire prompted curiously.

"If that happened, I would've never met you, since I was born centuries after the fact." Alexander said. "It's a bit of a paradox, isn't it?"

He could _feel_ the vampire smirk against his shoulder.

"It's a favorite catchphrase of you priests that God works in mysterious ways, is it not?" he murmured, glancing upwards. "Perhaps I was cursed so that I could find my way to you in the future and thus know completeness."

Alexander made an incoherent noise, covering his face as his cheeks burned red.

"D-don't say things like that."

"Is it my fault you're so easy to fluster?"

"I'm a _priest!"_

"And I, a lost soul." The vampire smirked and nuzzled against his neck again. "A perfect unity of opposites."

Alexander scoffed, glad to get on another topic. "That's alchemic. You have part of the Ripley Scroll on your coffin –you knew about this sort of thing already?"

"But of course. I didn't spend _all_ my nights in debauchery, back in Transylvania."

Alexander snorted in disbelief, making the vampire chuckle warmly.

"The _soror mystica_." he murmured as he stopped. "Companion and assistant to the Work. Luna to one's Sol."

Alexander buried his face in one hand, trying and failing to cool his automatic blush. While a vaguely implicit statement outside of alchemy, the vampire saying that to him was _very_ suggestive when he knew that they both knew about alchemic concepts and methodology: the meeting of Sol, the sun, and Luna, the moon, were heavily symbolic parts of the chemical processes, but like all other parts of alchemy, they were more than just anthropomorphized aspects of the Work. Sol met Luna, boy met girl, man met woman, and potential king met potential queen: and after their meeting the inevitable happened, and they made love, as in alchemic terms they had to. The physical joining of male and female produced a hermaphrodite, which served as the unity of two opposites and all they stood for, creating a finished Work: the Philosopher's Stone.

By God, it was an obscure way to flirt, and he hated that he knew what the vampire actually meant.

"I despise you." he muttered into his hand, making the vampire laugh again.

"You must admit that we exemplify the Work rather neatly."

"We're both men."

"A petty detail."

"This is the most obscure, most obsolete, most ridiculously _esoteric_ kind of flirtation that I've ever encountered."

"So you acknowledge that we're flirting?" the vampire asked with a grin, tilting his head back to look at Alexander.

He grumbled low in his throat and lowered his hand to look at the vampire. "You'd better not tell _anyone_ about this, or I swear I'll spread the news about who you were and how you became this way far and wide." Alexander said tersely.

The vampire smiled.

"I was wondering when you'd bring it up." he said wistfully. "If you are from my present, then this must be my past. You want to return, don't you?"

"Obviously." Alexander scoffed. "I've spent enough time in your head as it is."

"Would you consider it time well-spent?" the vampire asked, tilting his head.

Alexander had to pause at that. All the discomfort and pain and embarrassment he had endured flashed before his eyes, but also the odd exhilaration of the hunt shared between him and one of Alucard's past selves, the greater understanding he had gained of the vampire and how he ticked.

"Its been…educational." he said after a long moment.

"Only that?"

"I've begun to pity you, vampire." Alexander said sharply. "I don't _like_ pitying you."

"Ah, of course." the vampire murmured in realization. "You are a hunter. I am something to be destroyed, not pitied. It dulls your edge."

"I'm the trump card of Iscariot." Alexander huffed, feeling like he had to explain himself somehow.

"Never heard of them." the vampire replied, surprising him and then moving to explain when the vampire noticed his surprise. "I never paid much attention to organizations and groups. A hunter is a hunter. You all mean the same thing to me and my kind."

"Right. Obviously." Alexander agreed, feeling somewhat strange about doing so.

There was a long, long silence between the two of them. It was much less restful than before, and Alexander felt fidgety and slightly awkward, somehow.

He supposed that this was why Alucard referred to Sir Hellsing with such respect, though. Quite aside from her own formidable willpower and strength, the Hellsing family probably had, on some instinctive level, filled the role of Master and sire for Alucard. Just because he had transformed through unholy and occult personal means, rather than vampiric infection, didn't mean that Alucard wasn't, when all was said and done, still a vampire. Cursory though it may sometimes be, he obeyed the laws of his own kind: blessed and holy items affected him, and he could create fledglings of his own.

Vampirism had to have come from _somewhere_ , after all, and the current running theory was that creatures like Alucard –only much, much older– had transformed themselves through means similar to those described in the obscure texts, and then spread their curse. As an unholy infection, there had to have been a patient zero –or multiple patients, as Alexander now guessed. Something singular and unique, powerful and alone.

"I've been here for a couple hours." he said at last. "Why hasn't anyone else come down?"

The vampire shrugged again.

"They come when they need to make use of me." he said. "They must have none now. I am safely bound and locked away, so they also have no reason for concern."

Alexander almost asked if the vampire knew how to undo the seals. Living at someone else's mercy didn't suit him: Alexander was happy to serve and be of use to the Catholic Church, because that was how he had been raised and how he had lived his life. Alucard was different –too wild, too arrogant, too fierce. But of course, that was _why_ he had been captured and tamed to begin with. He was a threat. He was absolutely a threat, and he would continue to be if anyone ever released him.

That didn't make Alexander comfortable with the knowledge that people who actively disliked the vampire would be able to decide when or even _if_ he ate, he slept, he moved beyond the confines of this mind-numbing stone cell. It wasn't a good thought to have.

"In any case, I need some of your blood." he said after another pause. "Willingly given."

The vampire hummed acknowledgement, and Alexander withdrew a bayonet, He paused, however, when he moved to nick one of the vampire's legs through his full-body straightjacket.

"It does get better." Alexander said quietly. "In the future. You seem…happy, with your life, when I meet you. At least, as far as I could ever tell."

The vampire leaned his head back and turned to smile at Alexander. His expression was still somewhat vacant and dull, but there was a spark of quiet amusement in his eyes.

"What makes you think I'm not happy with my life now?" he asked wryly.

Alexander winced and quickly made the cut, flicking his bayonet back into his sleeve and putting his hand over the vampire's knee as blood seeped into his glove once more and light began to grow around them.

Before he could lose his nerve, though, Alexander closed his eyes and quickly turned his head, placing a light kiss on the vampire's forehead as Alucard stiffened in shock.

"I thought you said-"

"You know very well what the kiss of peace is." Alexander mumbled, red-faced. "Don't go getting any ideas, Alucard."

He felt the vampire smile against his chin before the familiar haze took him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was merrily writing along on this, all “hee-hee-hoo-hoo I get to do character studies and vampire aesthetic” and then I looked at the word count and I was all like *surprised Pikachu meme* 
> 
> THIS IS NOW THE LONGEST FIC IN THE ALUCARD/ANDERSON AO3 CATEGORY?!
> 
> This is literally only the second time I’ve ever written for this pairing and I am SO not prepared for that. My first one is like fourth longest and that was mind-blowing enough.
> 
>  _UnDead_ :  
> This was how the word was spelled in Dracula, which would have only been a few years before this. So no, I'm not being weird and edgy. Stoker did it first!
> 
>  _Kiss of peace_ :  
> A Christian gesture of blessing. It basically means “peace be with you,” and is occasionally referred to as a holy kiss or a kiss of love. It probably originated in the ancient western Mediterranean custom for men to greet each other with a kiss, which passed over to ancient Judea and thus Christians. It could be mouth-to-mouth or mouth to cheek, and though it isn’t really used anymore to my knowledge, it was, as Anderson notes, still a thing in the 15th century. The sign of peace is actually still usually offered during Catholic Mass, but has changed to just shaking hands and saying “Peace be with you."


	6. Hellsing Estate, London, England, 1919 CE

* * *

_Finally, we shall become eternal.  
"The darkness over here is sweet."_

_I pierce deep into you._

* * *

It was a good thing that Alexander had had that rest in the basement, because his reflexes throbbed a warning as soon as he manifested, and he had to duck.

A piece of torn-up sod flew past him, accompanied by a spray of dirt as Alexander shielded his face with annoyance, stepping away from the direct line of fire.

It was still nighttime, still London, still the Hellsing estate –probably now the Hellsing Estate in truth– and slightly warmer than last time, but most of the change seemed to be focused on the fact that the expansive and formerly well-trimmed lawn was in shambles. It looked like a series of bombs had gone off, ripping open the dirt into moist black trenches and craters, and the culprit wasn't hard to find, given as a man in a proper evening suit was yelling furiously at a dog twice his height with a series of rolling red eyes parading down its back and skull. This dog –which was almost certainly Alucard– sat in the midst of all this destruction, looking completely unrepentant as the man swore and raged. 

Alexander approached with the caution warranted by such a large form –Alucard was hard enough to deal with as a man, attempting to fight a dog of that size head-on was doomed to end in failure. Everything else aside, Alucard could probably bowl him right over, or pick him up and bite him in two.

As Alexander got closer, using the torn-up bushes and sometimes even trees as good cover, he got the gist of the yelling and was thus able to identify the man –this, then, would've been the Hellsing after Abraham, who had managed to keep control for only a few decades before ceding control to Arthur, the current leader's father. Alexander remembered this Hellsing as being remarkable for being unremarkable, an adaptable man that quickly took root in this new country by Anglicizing the Helsing name, converting to Protestantism (heretic), and making connections with the royal family. Despite these accomplishments, though, he was largely forgotten in his family's history, given the short duration of his control and his unfortunate tendency to be a people-pleaser, something that was exaggerated towards the later years of his reign to such an extent that his oldest son took control before something untoward would occur.

Being a nice, accommodating person was all very well and good, but it was not suitable for a politician, nor a noble who dabbled in politics, and _certainly_ not for a man who kept an ancient vampire in his basement.

"-and I know you don't care, but replacing all this takes _money!_ Money that we don't have!"

The dog's mouth peeled up and back, revealing row after row of serrated, knifelike teeth in a lupine grin.

"But the war is over, oh my _master_." Alucard drawled, his sardonic baritone shaking the air. No doubt about it –that was the voice that Alexander knew. "Am I not allowed to celebrate?"

"Your idea of celebration gives everyone else a migraine." Hellsing said with annoyance. The dog grinned wider, with trails of drool starting to slither to the ground. "And stop that! Talk to me as a human man, and stop being so- so _grotesque!"_

"If you can't handle my grotesquery, then you shouldn't be taking your father's mantle." Alucard sneered as he writhed and reformed into a mostly-human shape, though his hair and the edges of his clothes still flickered and writhed like black flame. Two for two, it was the form Alexander recognized most as well: red duster, black suit, short black hair and crimson-red eyes, bright and sharp as holly berries. Complex red pentagrams marked the back of the vampire's hands, and he looked down at his putative master with disdain. "You shame his legacy."

"The only shameful thing here is you!" Hellsing returned with annoyance. "My father has been dead for years now, and you may as well get used to the fact!"

He folded his arms and regarded the vampire with a stern glare.

"If appearance and legacy bother you so much, then _you_ can be the one to fix this mess. Fill the holes back up with earth and don't bother, harass, inconvenience, or injure anyone else as you do." Hellsing ordered. "Don't stop until I call you or the task is done."

Alucard's lips curled back, revealing his sharp fangs. "Menial work. Get a servant to do it."

"You _are_ a servant." Hellsing replied icily. The seals on the back of Alucard's hands flared brighter for a moment, and the vampire's expression twitched, before smoothing over into neutral annoyance.

"By your orders, then, my master." he muttered sulkily, and Hellsing gave a huff of satisfaction before turning and stomping back inside. The vampire turned back to the ruined lawn, a twist of irritation and, oddly enough, smug complacency on his face as shadows gathered, collecting the sprawled pieces of dirt and sweeping them back into the gaping craters.

Alexander waited until he was sure the Hellsing was gone before walking out to meet Alucard, who was busy if not overly absorbed in the admittedly dull task. The vampire's eyes flicked over to him almost as soon as he began to approach, of course, and Alexander blinked at the exulted gleam that quickly kindled in the vampire's gaze. Had they gone through this enough times for Alucard to recognize him on sight?

"And who are you?" Alucard asked, immediately removing that possibility as he grinned ferally, baring a sharklike maw of teeth. "Here for a challenge, priest? Trying to kill a vampire in a heathen land?"

His hair, which had barely settled, already began to seethe and writhe again as shadows crept in from every direction. Alexander eyed them warily, but he supposed that this did make a certain kind of sense. Alucard was visibly more defiant, almost barely constrained, and given the exasperation in Hellsing's voice, probably far more maddening than what Alexander was used to. The vampire had probably "settled" into his role, as much as such a being _could_ settle, and was now constantly pushing his Master's boundaries, not caring about the punishments Hellsing inflicted in turn, only caring about testing to see if the man was worthy to control him to begin with.

It made sense. Alucard was a predator before he was anything else, and just because _one_ Hellsing had crushed and defeated him, it didn't mean he was going to tamely bend the knee to all the rest. They had to _prove_ themselves.

Alexander flicked several bayonets out of his sleeves. If that was the case –if Alucard was going to be an annoying half-tamed _dog_ about this– then he would have to beat the vampire into the ground to make Alucard listen to him to begin with.

Alucard all but shuddered in delight, shadows whipping forward to engulf Alexander as the vampire lunged towards him. The sudden attack and the eagerness thereof made sense –Alucard's orders were probably loose enough to allow the vampire to defend the estate as needed, if an obvious attacker came knocking.

And as always, Alucard thrived on starting a fight.

It was oddly nostalgic, fighting the vampire like this, with his barriers struggling to dissolve the shadows, some being dissolved in turn and others burning the shadows away as he and Alucard clashed, holy against unholy. Alucard didn't have any weapons, probably because his current Master didn't even _trust_ him with them, but that didn't stop him from grabbing and twisting a blade right out of Alexander's hands. The vampire's pain tolerance and resistance to blessed silver had increased, apparently.

Time seemed to fall away as they fought, Alexander sinking back into a private, familiar pattern with relief. No matter what shape the vampire wore, he still moved the same, still adopted the same tactics, and Alexander returned as he always had, the two of them ripping up more of the sod and tearing into one another, spilling blood, even though Alexander was still very careful not to let the vampire taste or touch his. The Count's earlier assessment about consent and understanding from the past self held true: Alucard bled all over him multiple times, especially when Alexander jammed a bayonet through his throat at close range, and it didn't do a thing for the ritual.

Alexander found himself grinning as the vampire threw him through several trees, imagining if this same fight had taken place on the modern grounds. Sir Hellsing would probably be furious, and Alucard's little fledging would either be stricken in a corner or struggling to help with that monstrously heavy cannon of hers. It wouldn't be and never was of much use: he and her master moved too fast, lunging in and breaking apart to take advantage of or make an opening, whirling and clashing together like the sparks that flew from the contact of steel against steel. She could just as easily shoot her master as shoot him, because while speed was nothing to a vampire, unpredictability was, and Seras Victoria was too young to match the blistering, erratic pace they both set.

Alucard didn't have a weapon, and to make do for that he barely kept himself together in human form at all, striking against Alexander as a whirling mass of teeth, eyes, and crackling shadows. It was a good tactic: few humans were used to fighting something of that scale or style, and the fact that arms or legs could protrude from any separate part of the writhing, inky mass kept even an experienced hunter like Alexander on his toes.

Still, it was clear that Alucard was pushing his seals to the limit, and Alexander wondered why, for an unknown opponent like him, whose strength had yet to be measured. It was an unprecedented amount of effort, and more than that, a show of unnatural ability that Alucard would shy from in as little as eighty years.

Of course, if the clothing and conversation had told him anything, Alexander would've said that this was sometime shortly after the first World War, which made him wonder. Had Alucard fought in it? Evidence was scanty, on account of how tightly Hellsing guarded their earliest records. Alexander wouldn't have thought letting Alucard onto a battlefield of that mass was a good idea, not now, not when the current Hellsing only barely held his reins as it was. A wild, unrestrained Alucard rampaging across a battlefield was not something Alexander would want to see, especially with the sheer amount of death and bloodshed that the Great War had generated. So much blood had been spilled on those battlefields, even _Alucard_ might not be able to drink it all, and the resulting power that the vampire would've gained would be monstrous.

Enough, perhaps, to break the seals when an inexperienced master held the other end of their control, which was probably why this Hellsing _hadn't_ released Alucard onto the Front. It must have been painful for both of them, in different ways, for Hellsing to keep such a potent weapon from annihilating scores of the stubborn other side on No-Man's Land, and for Alucard to be kept from a battlefield he could probably literally _smell_ from all the way across the Channel.

No wonder he was so…feral.

Still, Alucard was significantly less powerful than his older selves, no doubt due to the intervention and dampening of the Hellsing seals, and more than that, he was weaponless and Alexander had been fighting him in one form or another for several days now. Slowly, little by little, he drove Alucard back, towards what seemed to be decorative gardens at the rear of the estate, weakening the vampire with the steady burn of holy power as he went.

The fight finally ended when Alexander nearly decapitated Alucard in a brief moment of humanoid form and kicked the rest of him onto the ground, stamping onto the rough area of the vampire's chest and pinning a flurry of bible pages around them.

Slowly, Alucard swirled and coalesced into human form, looking up at Alexander with wide-eyed surprise. Given what he knew of Alucard's _actual_ past, rather than the encounters they'd had through all these visions, Alexander was willing to bet that the vampire could count the number of times he'd been genuinely beaten on the fingers of both or maybe even just _one_ hand. Having a stranger randomly appear and trounce him so thoroughly must've been as much of a shock as it was a delight.

"I've got your attention now, right?" Alexander asked, evening his breathing out slowly. The vampire blinked.

"I'd say you do." he said. "Your name, priest?"

"Alexander Anderson. You go by Alucard now, right?"

The vampire beneath him started to smile, slowly.

"Indeed I do." he said. "I'm guessing that you've known me before, haven't you?"

"Do I seem familiar?" Alexander asked as he cocked his brow, wondering if Alucard was actually going to remember the present on his own for once, however blurry the vision made it.

"Vaguely." Alucard said. "So we _do_ know each other."

"Not yet we don't." Alexander said with an annoyed scowl. He stepped off the vampire and extended his hand, making Alucard blink slowly again before he reached up and accepted it, allowing Alexander to help pull him to his feet. "This is a vision of your past, so from your perspective, I know you from the future."

"Sounds confusing." Alucard said carelessly, his eyes roaming over Alexander in that half-familiar look of curious wonder. Odd, how he had met the vampire for the first time so _many_ times by now that that measuring, inquisitive glance was becoming familiar.

Alexander snorted mirthlessly.

"Not when I'm the only one that remembers anything." he said, looking at Alucard with annoyance. "The is the fifth time that I've run into a new form of you, and every time, every new vision, you get immersed in it completely."

"The shape and form hold no meaning for me." Alucard said with a huff, giving him an offended look. Alexander shrugged in acknowledgement.

"One of your past selves said that the form you most commonly revert to in a given age expresses the way you think, how you feel." he replied. "And that these visions are probably hinging upon times of metamorphosis for you, times when you change from the person you used to be, which is why I need consent and understanding from the current version of yourself when you spill blood to send me onwards."

Alucard hummed, then his gaze drifted back to the house behind Alexander.

"So, none of this is real." he said.

"No. It's a reflection of your memories, and although _you_ won't be able to tell, everything gets blurry and unformed outside your sphere of attention." Alexander told him.

A flash of something crossed the vampire's face, before he shook himself and turned away. Alexander, for lack of anything else to do, followed him as the vampire started walking towards an arbor.

"So you said that you've met four other…versions of myself." Alucard said slowly as they walked. "Which are those?"

"You as a human." Alexander said, taking the opportunity for what it was as he walked beside the vampire, looking around curiously at the unguarded Hellsing estate. Oh, it would probably have changed in the two generations after this, but it wasn't like he would ever have another opportunity to look around. "You as a vampire newly turned. You as a vampire pushing his boundaries. You…as you were after Van Helsing captured you."

Alucard huffed softly, smirking as he rubbed his chin.

"That was indeed a time of metamorphosis." he chuckled, red eyes twinkling with amusement, before his smile faded a little. "Its strange to think that the Master is gone."

Alexander hummed, not sure if he was supposed to offer sympathy or congratulations. Alucard's history with the Dutch hunter was obviously complex, Alexander knew that much just from the peripheries. It was easy enough to put this in vampire-hunting terms, as he had been trained to do, see the patterns he had been trained to notice. The vampire was reacting badly –lashing out, being defiant– due to the loss of support from a Master he respected, like any vampire would upon the destruction of their sire. Except Abraham _wasn't_ Alucard's sire, not in the traditional sense, and the instinctive regard for him as such was tempered by Alucard's abrupt loss of freedom and personal agency, not to mention whatever dubiously unethical treatment the vampire had endured under the hands of the vengeful hunter and his coterie.

But honestly, Alucard wouldn't be Alucard if every relationship he had _wasn't_ devilishly complex and probably at least a little unhealthy. The vampire seemed to thrive on it.

"You still have _a_ Master." Alexander reminded him, and the vampire sneered briefly. They were silent for a moment, Alexander letting Alucard set the pace as they meandered into some kind of hedge maze, starting to weave through it, before he spoke up again. "What even _can_ they do to you, if you misbehave?"

"Forbid my coffin from me." Alucard said with a shrug. "Deny me blood. Torture me. It's limited to the inventiveness of my master, and I have to say, this one is not nearly so fiendish as Abraham."

Alexander winced. Having _Vlad the Impaler_ describe someone else as "fiendish" probably did not bode well for what had happened to Alucard during his initial years at Hellsing.

"And that doesn't bother you?" he asked skeptically. Alucard gave him a look.

"It doesn't bother _you_? You're a priest, Father Anderson. You, too, are a slave to a higher power."

"I _chose_ to be this way." Alexander snapped, scowling. "I've followed God all my life and I am _proud_ to have done so."

"Choosing to be a slave is still putting a shackle around your neck." Alucard replied, eyes flicking away to idly watch the moon rising above the grounds. "Can you take it off, now? Are you even willing?"

"I'm _not_ going to abandon my faith." Alexander hissed furiously. "I'm not like you."

Alucard glanced at him and smirked, then looked away.

"So you can't." he said. "Tell me then, what makes us different? We have both, in our own way, allowed ourselves to be shackled to a higher power. I understand that I am enslaved and make the most of it, whereas you delude yourself into thinking that you are still a free man. In my eyes, that makes me the better of us two."

"I'm not a slave."

Alucard chuckled low in his throat.

"The definition of a domesticated animal is one that will not leave his cage when it is opened." he said. "What stops you from leaving your position as a priest?"

"My faith." Alexander said tightly. "I am a man of God, and this is the position I serve him in. Anything else is a betrayal of my vows."

"The priesthood is a position like any other. That dog collar and cassock is just a uniform." Alucard replied easily. "Abandoning that life does not mean abandoning your faith."

Alexander couldn't think of an easy answer to that, and he wasn't sure how that made him feel.

"I've seen it often enough in my lifetime." Alucard continued. "And I'm sure you have, as well. Humans without any connection to the clergy are frequently the most numinous, whereas those with the highest position are usually the most corrupt. The schism between the Protestants and the Catholics happened because of debauchery in the church, did it not?"

Alexander scoffed bitterly.

"I don't see why I should bother arguing, since you'd insist you know better than me." he said. "You were alive when it happened."

Alucard grinned a little, not denying it.

"On the _assumption_ that you're right," Alexander continued reluctantly. "I'm more than just a priest. I'm a paladin, too. My _job_ is fighting and killing monsters, to protect people. To protect members of the faith. I'd be betraying more than just my vows if I ran away from that."

The vampire nodded thoughtfully, turning another corner in the maze. Alexander wasn't sure if the garden was actually formed if this way or if Alucard's fancy had twisted the passage leading between the neatly trimmed hedges, creating a maze they could wander in endlessly as they talked. The moon was out, but the night was dark enough that most of the leafy walls were featureless and vague and Alexander was relying more or less on the bright red of the vampire's duster to lead the way. That would've been extraordinarily stupid if he was dealing with any other vampire, but despite his argumentative mood, Alucard was…trustworthy.

Barely. Mostly. In a certain light.

"You certainly don't seem like a man that would run from a fight." the vampire agreed, smiling up at the moon again.

There was a long, somewhat companionable silence, before Alexander dared to ask something he had never so much as thought on before, bracing himself for disappointment.

"Why do you even care?"

Alucard glanced at him and smirked. "You are the first man since Van Helsing to have ever defeated me in such a manner. The thought of a rival intrigues me."

"Not that." Alexander said. " _Why_ do you want me to question my faith?"

He'd come across it before, of course, countless times, from both this vampire and others. They tried to make him doubt, to shake his faith, and he had always ignored or repressed those words as the last desperate acts of sinners, or as poisonous temptation from an unholy creature determined to destroy him from the inside out. He had dismissed them, but that meant he had never thought about them, and thinking on it now struck a spark of wary curiosity in him. Alucard, for all his many, _many_ flaws, _did_ value him as a rival, and wasn't interested in tearing him down. On the contrary, for whatever skewed reason, the vampire seemed _enthused_ by the idea of Alexander growing strong enough and experienced enough to kill him. Why, then, did he adopt the tactic Alexander had seen from so many vampires that had been trying to make him falter?

Alucard's eyes quirked upwards in surprise, before he hummed and looked away.

"I wonder." he murmured, a smirk flirting at the edges of his mouth. "Have you ever heard the phrase _'justice is blind'_?"

"Of course." Alexander said cautiously, wondering where exactly this was going.

"Perhaps faith is as well."

The priest's eyebrow twitched in annoyance.

"You think I'm a fanatic." he said, turning his head to glare a little at the vampire. That was a non-answer, and he wanted to make sure Alucard knew it.

The vampire smirked as he caught Alexander's irritated look, then continued.

"The very definition of a fanatic is a person filled with excessive and single-minded zeal, especially for an extreme religious cause." he said easily. "And I of all people can't judge you for being fanatical, which, as you've seen my human self, I'm sure you know. All the same, I feel as though I became closer to God when I forsook him."

"So you want to share that "revelation" with me?" Alexander asked in disgust.

"Your strength is your faith, Father Anderson, and your faith makes you more powerful, gives you focus, like a stream of water forced through a channel. But you let other people build the walls of your channel and decide its direction, and you do so _happily_ , because you are under the illusion that this is your best way in which to serve God." Alucard said, looking at him solemnly. "Its not. It limits your thinking, blinds you to other possibilities, chains you to their whims."

Alexander couldn't meet his eyes, and then stiffened as the vampire stepped closer, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"You deserve better than that." Alucard said quietly. " _That_ , Father Anderson, is why I _care_ about lifting your blindness, though I should add that I don't mean to destroy your faith. You're useless to me if you're blind."

Alexander shifted his feet, uneasy and yet reluctant to push the vampire's hand away.

"What makes you think I deserve "better" than that?" he said, meeting Alucard's eyes again. "You don't even know me, in this form."

"I know that you are a powerful man and a worthy rival." Alucard answered immediately. "I know that you are a man of unshakable faith, and faith deserves to be rewarded, not spent futilely for a silent God and uncaring comrades."

 _I don't want you to end up like me._ hung unspoken and heavy in the air between them. Alexander coughed and looked away from the vampire's vibrant red eyes, his face feeling warm. Despite now being a bright, sharp red, hints of molten orange still lingered in Alucard's eyes, giving them a breathtaking, shimmering, hypnotic quality quite different from the vampire's natural ability to charm and entrap people. Alucard's thumb shifted, stroking over Alexander's shoulder in a gesture that was almost _fond_ , and his face burned brighter.

"You aren't used to receiving compliments, are you?" Alucard asked, sounding amused.

Alexander shrugged, though not in a way that disturbed the vampire's hand.

"We've been over this before: I'm a priest." he said. "Most people see me as an authority figure, and its…odd, for someone to compliment a person like that. And I had a hand in raising most of the people I work with, so they look up to me as well. Everyone else in this line of work either hates me or is terrified of me. Or you, in which case it's probably a bizarre mix of the Lord knows what."

Alucard grinned, again not denying the accurate summation.

"I've had nearly five hundred years to lose any sense of inhibition." he said. "I think as I feel, and express both as it suits me."

"I _know_." Alexander huffed. "Tearing up the lawn, Alucard? I knew you were headstrong, but what kind of childish prank is that?"

"Abraham's son needs to prove his mettle." Alucard replied. "The Master caught and tamed me, but my pride isn't so far gone that I'll allow a petulant whelp to control me as he did. Besides, I grow bored, lurking around the estate. The boy won't send me out unless he has no other choice."

"That's a poor use of you." Alexander noted, glancing at the vampire, before smirking. "Hellsing should know better than to leave their pet in a cage without any toys to entertain him."

Alucard cackled, stepping closer and turning to face him as his hand shifted to cup the back of Alexander's neck.

"How true, Father Anderson."

Alexander scowled and idly swatted away a curling tendril of redly-glowing shadow as it looped back to merge with Alucard's untidy, writhing hair. "Don't think I'm offering. What does that even _feel_ like, anyways?"

"Its impossible to describe to someone who's still alive." Alucard said with a shrug, correctly intuiting that Alexander meant the way his body was shifting and dissolving aimlessly, barely-caged powers responding to the vampire's excitement as his half-humanoid form seethed and crawled, dissolving into an inky mass of nothing at their feet. "I don't feel in the ordinary way to begin with, anymore, and this is a step beyond that."

"How _do_ you feel?" Alexander asked, curious. He'd had ample experience with the way that Alucard could shrug off intensely painful injuries, but that could mean anything, from increased resistance to silver and blessings to masochism to a simple lack of working nerves to respond to pain. He wanted to know, and with the context of this oddly pleasant, peaceable conversation, he had a good chance of finding out.

Alucard hummed thoughtfully, eyes sliding over Alexander's face as his fingers stirred idly against the back of Alexander's neck, half-stroking, half-inspecting. The shadows around him stilled, shrank inwards, solidifying Alucard's form as his human curiosity overcame his unrestrained powers.

"I can feel your heat soaking into my hand." he said after a moment. "It's very warm. I believe the sensation is the equal and opposite of what _you_ would feel if you touched cold metal."

"Wouldn't it be unpleasant, then?" Alexander asked with a slight frown. The side of Alucard's mouth curled upwards.

"No, Father Anderson, it's not unpleasant. Its been so many years since I was warm for myself, so feeling it in someone else is…"

The movement of his fingers was _definitely_ slow and savoring, now.

"…nostalgic. Comforting, even."

"Hmm." Alexander said, eyes sliding away as he felt his face heat up. With the vampire standing right in front of him, hand cupped around the back of his neck, Alexander knew it would be useless to hope that Alucard missed that, nor was he wrong.

"Poor priest." Alucard chuckled, a familiar mocking smile on his face. "You're starved for affection, if this gets you so flustered."

Alexander's face went bright red.

"I am _not!_ " he hissed furiously.

Alucard rolled his eyes a little.

"If you insist." he said carelessly. He then tilted his head a little with a smile, sliding his fingers down over the protrusion of Alexander's vertebrae in a way that sent shivers down his spine. "In any case, I've been dead for more than long enough to find _any_ sensation pleasant."

"You're numb, because on a physical level, you're basically just a corpse." Alexander said, trying to focus on the conversation and not that idle touch. "Right?"

"I'm undead." Alucard agreed. "My natural state is a state without sensation, as I am when I sleep within my coffin. Dead, numb, and gone."

"That can't be comfortable." Alexander said without thinking, and Alucard shrugged vaguely, his hair eeling and shifting from down to his back to above his shoulders again.

"Over 400 years, Father Anderson." he replied. "I've gotten used to it."

He paused, then grinned slyly.

"Of course, I'm still _fully_ capable of experiencing pleasure and arousal as a living man."

Alexander shivered at the vampire's low, suggestive tone, quickly stepping sideways, away from Alucard's hand.

"I know that." he said hastily. "Vampires can still have sex, even if nothing is ever produced from their union."

"Then you should also know that we tend not to feel things as the living might." Alucard told him, raising an eyebrow as he smirked a little. "And yet you asked me anyways."

"I don't –engage in conversation with vampires, normally." Alexander said, putting his nervous energy to use as he ostentatiously dusted himself off, even though the vampire had only actually touched his shoulder and the back of his neck. "I was curious to hear how you described it, that's all."

"Gathering information on your opponent, I suppose." Alucard said dryly. Alexander huffed out a sigh, looking away, before glaring back at the vampire.

"Why are you so much more…uninhibited?" he asked in frustration. "You've never said anything even remotely this…like _this_ , not in all the time I've known you."

"Given as that deals with my _future_ self, of which I have no memory, I'm sure I couldn't tell you." Alucard said with a shrug.

"Guess." Alexander said grumpily.

"I'm limited to the personality and memories of this age, Father Anderson." the vampire replied, smirking at him. "By the nature of these visions, which catch onto moments of change for my old self, that makes guessing physically impossible. You'll simply have to ask me after this is all over."

Alexander rubbed a hand over his face. He had been immersed in these visions for so long, it was almost odd to be reminded of the real world, and it was _definitely_ unsettling to think of facing Alucard after all this. Too much had shifted –just look at him having a relatively civil conversation with the vampire right now! Letting Alucard touch him, throw accusations at his faith –that was the danger of learning so much about the vampire. Alexander had gained a lot of experience when it came to fighting him across the ages, learned much about Alucard's powers, but the unfortunate side-effect of such knowledge was that Alexander had grown…closer, to the vampire. He knew him, and thus he understood him, and thus he _empathized_ with him to a certain extent.

Maybe a large extent.

Maybe to an almost _fond_ extent.

Alexander was not looking forward to dealing with that later. It would be very convenient if Alucard forgot everything that had occurred in these visions when they ended, as an ironic twist to how he had forgotten everything outside the visions as they occurred, but Alexander doubted life would be that easy or simple.

It was easier to shut down these kinds of feelings when Alucard had _just_ been Alucard, a vampire that he had been sworn to fight, defeat, and kill. Now Alexander knew him as a _person_ , a multifaceted person with far too much in common with Alexander for the priest to feel comfortable in condemning him entirely.

But he was also a vampire, and what Alexander was thinking right now was the beginning of a dangerous road to go down.

"Well," he coughed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Anyways, I'll need your blood for that."

Alucard shrugged and lifted a hand to his mouth, biting down and shredding his now-human index finger. He held out his hand, and silently, Alexander took it, wondering what the heat of his hand felt like against an open wound as the light slowly overtook them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the very existence of a generation between Integra's dad and Abraham Van Helsing himself is kinda dubious, but considering Van Helsing was a devout Catholic and Integra is a devout Protestant, and there's a fuzzy gap in the early 1900s when Van Helsing would've been super old and Arthur would've been super young, there is a decent possibility that there was a very lame, unmentioned Hellsing between Arthur and Abraham that kinda helped gel the transition.


	7. Millennium Research Lab, Warsaw, Poland, 1944 CE

* * *

__

_Your scent makes me go mad  
Waking in the midnight, I drink up the madness of love._

* * *

His heart jumped as he remanifested –the sudden, overwhelming reek of death and the staccato popping of distant gunshots was both familiar and unwelcome, and bayonets surged into his hands as Alexander automatically readied himself for a fight.

Then, as his vision cleared, his racing heart slowed, and he realized where he was.

Oh, he didn't have a clue of the _exact_ location, but even in the light of a distant moon, Alexander could tell that he was amongst the shattered remains of a modern building, with huge slabs of concrete and steel beams twisted and piled around him, like a hurricane had torn through the entire structure. Some of the cuts were unnaturally clean, like fine wire had sliced the huge chunks of material apart, and the air was thick with the stench of blood and decay. Looking down, he could see numerous bodies twisted and crushed in the remains, and his lip curled as he saw the swastika on many of the uniforms that he could see.

Filthy bastards.

Another, somewhat more startling note was the fact that a number of these bodies showed telltale signs of undeath, which probably explained why this was a place Alucard had been sent to. Was this the abbreviated, failed Millennium Project that Alexander had heard about? He knew that they had been dabbling in occult sciences, but all their research had been destroyed…when Hellsing was sent to take care of the problem.

So this, then, was probably the last strains of WWII, somewhere on the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland.

Alexander flicked his bayonets back, then began to move through the ruins carefully, stepping over body parts and smears of blood, bullet casings and fallen masonry, heading for the outside of the complex. Whether from the nearness of the Front or from Alucard and his erstwhile partner taking care of the last bits of organized resistance, the sound of gunfire still echoed repeatedly in the distance, a sound that rose and fell like the wind, laden with the stench of rot and munitions. In any case, Alexander didn't want to have to try and fight Alucard or anyone else in a bunch of ruins rife with the likelihood of errant survivors and tricky footing.

When he finally reached what had once been the front yard of this complex, Alexander took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair. Once again he was whole and pristine, on a physical level at least, unchanged by the past visions –not even Alucard's blood remained on his glove.

The problem, though, was that this was probably going to be the _last_ vision he endured, since Alucard had been locked in a basement for two decades prior to the current Sir Hellsing taking control. That had happened around 1989, which meant that Alucard had been buried within the Hellsing dungeons sometime within the late 1960s. That, in turn, left only a rough twenty years between now and the Alucard that Alexander knew, since there was little room for metamorphosis when the vampire was to all intents and purposes hibernating within the bowels of the Hellsing estate.

That was a problem. That was definitely a problem, because Alexander could –as Dracula had pointed out– do and say and enact any number of things within these visions, because they were essentially private. It was only him and only Alucard, as the sole sentient creatures within this entire made-up world. On the absurd but not impossible chance that Alucard forgot everything that had occurred within these visions when they both were freed, no one would ever know what had occurred within them, except Alexander. But with freedom looming close, all of that would soon change. 

He wondered what time it was now. Regenerator or not, Alexander had been awake for at _least_ 48 hours at this point –probably closer to three full days– and despite the dreamlike quality the visions lent him, a sense of constant present that allowed for neither hunger nor sleep, his mind had _still_ been running constantly for all that time. His thought processes were starting to get confused, foggy, which was the excuse he was going to offer if any of what had already occurred got out to the Vatican.

Maybe the excuse that he offered to himself.

Alexander shook himself and sat down on a conveniently-sized block of rubble, ignoring the fact that he was sitting across from the sprawled corpses of what must have been some kind of initial defense. The ground outside the shattered compound was torn and burned, indicating that this probably _was_ near the Front, and smoke and screams drifted through the air. It wasn't a place well-suited to thought or relaxation, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and Alexander was leery of wandering _too_ far away from the nucleus of the vision, wherever Alucard might be right now. Sure, it would dim the noise –it would dim _everything_ – but Alexander didn't want to chance getting far enough away that he fell off the map, so to speak. He'd heard stories…and had no desire to become one, himself.

What, precisely, was he going to do about this? What _could_ he do about this? He had tried strangling his feelings, tried ripping them out by the roots, and they had only grown stronger.

What made it worse was the fact that Alucard, if all of his past selves up to this point had been any indication, would probably _reciprocate_ , the intentions if not the feelings specifically. The vampire was very clearly open to just about any sort of relationship with Alexander, as a worthy rival and an opponent. Again, not the _healthiest_ of mind sets, but no one had accused the vampire of being anything but warped.

Another man might've been excited by that, but Alexander wasn't used to having _feelings_ for anyone, period, and he was in no way prepared to allow his feelings to be anything but genuine. He cared for his orphans with obvious gestures of support and love, and he was never anything but honest with anyone else, whether he liked them or loathed them. Alexander expressed his emotions: he wore his heart on his sleeve, inasmuch as he could in this line of work.

So when he _felt_ , despite his best intentions, for the vampire, his emotions were all the stronger and more intense. Alexander's feelings were genuine and terrible, and despite the vampire's clear interest in him and appreciation for his physique throughout many of these past lives, Alexander wasn't sure if Alucard was even capable of genuine _love_ anymore, or anything close to it. The vampire's interest was physical and fleeting, and Alexander had never been satisfied by half-measures, whether for feelings or for anything else.

The priest bent his head and sighed, looking down at his hands where they rested, laid loosely over his knees.

What a bloody mess.

He wasn't left to dwell in that pose for too long, however, as the air tingled and his muscles involuntarily tensed, recognizing the familiar aura of a powerful vampire. As he looked up, Alexander blinked in surprise, seeing a small white figure drifting across the wide open space of what might've been a field or a garden, before the war, heading in his direction. He didn't move as the vampire approached, instead studying this much younger, more petite form with confusion and curiosity. The eyes were the same, peering up at him like a bloody sunset, but the rest was _completely_ different from any other body that Alexander had seen the vampire shape himself into.

It was an oddly cobbled-together form, too: the long, shimmering curtain of silky black hair and the slight figure were very reminiscent of the doll-like child Alucard was portraying himself as, but there was something about the face –or perhaps beneath the face– of an adult. The white suit, too, so perfect and pristine and highly maintained, made it look like an adult had shrunk themselves down to the size of a child to play an ironic form of dress-up. The dangling fringed scarf and pillbox hat seemed like lazy additions –added as a mere afterthought, some vague echo of the current women's fashions– in an effort to fix this image more concretely as a female child in the minds of those around him. A Thompson's machine gun dangled carelessly from Alucard's hand like a toy purse, jolting Alexander with surprise until he remembered that neither the Jackal nor the Casull would have been created yet: Walter Dornez was still a child scarcely older than this shape.

Still, despite having seen Alucard with multiple different swords and physical forms before, it was somehow odd to see him with a different _gun_ , like there was a missing piece somewhere in this image. Even outside of the changed shape, this wasn't Alucard –not the Alucard he knew. He wasn't complete, yet.

"Even most of your kind would say praying for these souls is worthless, priest." Alucard said languidly as he stopped a few feet away, indicating the nearby bodies. Disconcertingly enough, his voice hadn't changed with his size at all, still a deep pulse in the air that was highly at odds with his childlike guise.

"What's the point of making yourself look like a young girl if you won't change the way you sound?" Alexander asked in return, ignoring both the statement and its meaning. The vampire raised a slow eyebrow at his lack of surprise or, indeed, visible reaction to a small child with an adult's voice.

"You seem familiar with me, but I can't say we've ever met before." Alucard drawled after a moment, stepping closer through the rubble without looking away from Alexander, his short strides elegant, precise, and unhurried. "Or are you just a fool that doesn't see the sense in running from an obvious monster?"

Alexander could understand that. This war had torn the hearts and souls out of the people who had lived it, and Alucard had probably encountered many hopeless, deadened humans in this and other places on the Front, too battered by horror after horror to even offer a token response to the vampire's obvious unnatural existence.

"We haven't met, but I know you." he said. "Alucard."

The vampire blinked, then smirked, his face twisting in a way that negated his childlike features and showed the adult beneath.

"Interesting. Very interesting. A member of the Vatican, I suppose? Section XIII?"

Alexander wondered when Alucard had learned of his organization. There weren't any records of agents encountering him, and Alucard hadn't known about Iscariot a mere handful of decades ago.

"Yes." he said, resigned to enduring another of Alucard's changed perspectives. At least this personality was probably closest to his current one. Still, though, there was something he wanted to know before he tried to move on. "May I ask you something?"

"Most of your colleagues prefer fighting."

The corner of Alexander's mouth twitched. Ordinarily he would be in that camp with enthusiasm, but something was nagging him about this.

"Why a child?" he asked, looking up and down that tiny but deceptively powerful form.

Alucard grinned, baring his sharp fangs. "Oh, poor priest. The shape and form-"

"-mean nothing to you. I know." Alexander huffed, cutting him off as Alucard blinked with some surprise. "But you said once that the form you most commonly take –the form you revert to in a given age or decade or century– reflects a choice, a preference, a message, whether it was conscious or unconscious, to yourself or others. Why a child?"

Alucard's smug expression had slipped from his face entirely, and he was watching Alexander with wary intensity.

"You seem to know a lot about me, priest." he said quietly. With slow, deliberate care, he lifted his machine gun and delicately pressed the tip to Alexander's heart. "I have to wonder _how_ you know."

"Answer me and I'll answer you." Alexander replied, without reacting to the implicit threat of being shot at all. Dubious existence of physical damage in these visions or not, it wasn't like a shot to the heart with an ordinary lead bullet would keep him down for more than a few seconds at best. Alucard raised an eyebrow beneath his straight-cut bangs, then pulled the gun away with a shrug, letting it dangle again.

"My partner is a child. This form reflects a pleasing symmetry with him." he said carelessly, waving his free hand. "Light to his dark, female to his male, fury to his control."

Alexander's eyebrows furrowed. "Really? That's it?"

Alucard smirked again and smoothed a hand down his near-flat chest. "I do possess a sense of whimsy, priest." he drawled. "It amuses me to be female for a time, just as it amuses me to rip apart these Nazis while in the guise of the helpless children they have slaughtered."

He chuckled deeply, and Alexander huffed along with him, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"No wonder you're in white." he mumbled, and the vampire grinned, once more exposing his sharp fangs and pearly teeth.

"But of course." Alucard said, and pushed off the ground, twirling in a circle on one foot and laughing. It would have been a charming sight had he not been spinning himself on a shattered battlefield with a Tommy gun dangling from one hand, if the dust had actually dared to settle on his pristine white trousers, and if his giggling hadn't been the unearthly, unsettling laughter of a vampire king. "White is for innocence and funeral lilies, for purity and oblivion. I hunt as a ghost child, bringing despair and desolation in my wake."

He stopped spinning when he faced Alexander again, tilting his head with a grin that was oddly warmer and more human than his previous ones.

"You aren't like most humans I've met." Alucard said after a moment.

By that, Alexander figured that his lack of reaction to the frankly hair-raising sight of the monstrous child spinning and laughing by him/herself. And to be fair, in normal circumstances, he would have reacted…well, _normally_ to the vampire, but not now. Not after all these visions of Alucard through his past.

He knew too much.

In that sense, he supposed that he truly _was_ different, now, than any other human in the world. Regardless of how many more visions he received, Alexander now knew and understood Alucard perhaps even better than his own Master, Sir Hellsing. He was privy to some of Alucard's deepest, darkest, _oldest_ secrets: things that, back in the real world, perhaps only Alucard now knew. Things tangled in dusty, forgotten corners of the vampire's history, things Alucard had perhaps repressed and never told the Hellsings. Things Alucard had never told or shown _anyone_.

It changed things. It changed how he saw the vampire, how he understood the vampire, how he _felt_ about the vampire. Maybe too much…

"You seem at home." he said by way of reply, eyes drifting across the scarred and smoking earth. Alucard huffed with offended pride, placing one hand on his waist as he jerked his hips to the side in a macabrely childish gesture.

"This is my domain." he said haughtily. "I was raised in blood and battles, for far longer than even _you_ know, priest. Humans call this worse than the Great War, but they can only understand war as terms of scale. If you take all the war I have seen, this-"

Alucard gestured negligently with the Tommy gun at the ruins around them.

"-is merely _nostalgic_."

Alexander's eyes widened a little as he looked at the near-pouting vampire standing across from him. _Nostalgia_. He knew how Alucard had lived as a human: in a constant warzone, always overshadowed with the looming threat of invasion and the medieval terror of religious conversion. Vlad the Impaler had been traded to the Ottoman sultan when he was fourteen and his younger brother had been seven, in return for guaranteeing his father's good behavior. They were kept there for years, hostages in all but name, in a place that to Vlad must have been filled with strangers and enemies. Worse still, his brother eventually defected to their side, leaving him alone and betrayed.

Perhaps there was more to this shape than Alucard just whimsically matching himself to his human partner. In a landscape once more shredded and destroyed by war, with uncertainty and fear rife in everyone around him, Alucard had reverted to a child –a child that could rip through armies, slaughter entire battlefields, and brutally crush anything in his way. A child that, inasmuch as the Hellsing seals went, was in complete control of himself and everyone around him. There was nothing in the European theater of war, from Western to Eastern Front, that could make the ancient, enhanced vampire so much as blink –and Alexander was pretty sure Alucard could survive a nuclear warhead as well.

Nostalgia, indeed. Nostalgia for the childhood he had never had, perhaps.

This younger, childlike form may also be an expression of comfort, as bizarre as that sounded. Alucard had clearly become accustomed to serving Hellsing: he wasn't testing boundaries any longer, but was comfortably settled into his role and beginning to experiment with those around him and himself. Alexander wondered if this shape was an unconscious reflection of that, too, of how Alucard had grown up in a warzone and wanted to both seize his own childhood innocence and protect Walter Dornez's as best he could at the same time. Alexander didn't have the particulars, but he knew that Walter had only been a few years older than this form as the war had occurred, and he knew Alucard had a certain bond with the old man in more modern years. Walter had created those remarkable guns for him, after all.

"If you insist." he said with a slight huff, echoing the vampire's words to him earlier. "Why now, though? If this form is just out of whimsy, to match Walter's, why did the vision catch on this period of time? How have you changed since the last war? Why is this another stage in your metamorphosis?"

Alucard blinked again, but was quiet, studying him with some surprise as his red eyes flicked all over Alexander's form. Then he turned to look away, across the battlefield, as his eyes flared and glowed briefly. Comprehension dawned, and his pale lips twisted with annoyance as he turned back to Alexander.

"This isn't real."

Alexander shook his head.

"Why are _you_ here, then?"

"A ritual went wrong." Alexander sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. "A charged relic came into contact with your blood, and for some reason or another, I keep getting dragged through visions of your past, during times of change for you. Moments when your personality has shifted and reformed. I don't know why they keep making you think as you did when the memory occurred, though."

Alucard huffed with annoyance, carelessly tossing aside his gun. It clattered onto the stone, but then oozed and faded away into nothingness, proof that it had merely been an unconscious construct of the vampire's mind.

"I suppose, if that's the case, then you have been caught here because this is…" Alucard frowned, glanced away, then looked back at Alexander reluctantly. "…a time when I have begun to accept my masters, I suppose. The Hellsing family will continue to rule over me as long as Abraham's bloodline endures: his will runs strong in his descendants, though admittedly in different forms."

That was certainly in line with the personality that Alexander saw now. Alucard was looser than his feral, almost angry self of a mere thirty years ago, more relaxed, though still as damned arrogant and reckless as ever. In a way, it was comfortable and familiar, and that prompted Alexander's next line of conversation.

"All things being considered, you're basically the same as the vampire I know." he said, looking up and down Alucard's miniature self with a thoughtful frown. "Aside from your form, but as you said, the physical shape of your body means nothing to you. You're fundamentally identical to your modern self. Why am I here, then?"

Alucard frowned too, looking down at his open hands and flexing them contemplatively.

"Its true that if I'm the same as I was when you knew me, the ritual wouldn't have latched onto this time." he said slowly. "If I was the same, we should both be freed from it, as the ritual had come full circle. How many years has it been, since this memory?"

"If this is 1944, fifty-five." Alexander answered promptly.

Alucard hummed.

"And what has happened to me since then?"

Alexander blew out a long breath in annoyance.

"As far as I know, nothing much." he said, drumming his fingers on his knee and scowling down at the much-shorter vampire. "Just routine missions, no war, no new master. Nothing worth noting by the Vatican, anyway, before-"

He cut himself off, but Alucard's head had already come up like a hound catching a scent.

"Before…?"

Alexander looked away and shifted. "Arthur Hellsing may have locked you in the Hellsing basement for twenty years." he admitted reluctantly. "As far as our reports can tell, you were freed sometime in 1988 or 1989 by the current family head, Sir Integra Hellsing. Our sources are unclear on the exact details, since you weren't sent out into the field for at least a year after the fact."

"Given my adjustment period under the family's first generation, I doubt a sleep of a few decades would've had that much impact on me." Alucard said dryly, paralleling Alexander's prior assumptions. "Was there a reason?"

"I've heard Arthur considered you to be too…" Alexander paused for a moment to find the right words.

"Wild?" Alucard asked, smirking.

"Drastic." Alexander corrected. "He'd seen what you could do, and he thought you were too powerful to regularly rely on. Sooner or later, he'd become sloppy, or even worse, overconfident."

Alucard looked oddly pleased.

"Holding the reins to my kind of power can be addicting as any stimulant." he said. "I'm impressed that he recognized the danger before he succumbed to it."

Alexander huffed and adjusted his glasses.

"Well, all my information comes secondhand through historical reports and espionage, so don't expect that to be all of the right answer." he said. "The Hellsing family keeps its secrets well."

"Hmm. Well, regardless of their secrecy, we still have this puzzle to figure out." Alucard pointed out, drawing them both back to the task at hand. "According to you, nothing worth noting happened before my long sleep. What about after?"

"You have a female Master, for the first time ever, as far as we know." Alexander said with a shrug. "And she was young when she took control of you –about twelve or thirteen."

Alucard's eyebrows drew upwards.

"Twelve or thirteen?" he said.

"Twelve or thirteen."

"And by your account, she's kept control of me for another decade afterwards." the vampire said, then hummed, sounding impressed. "Abraham's blood runs true. You said her name was Integra?"

"Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing." Alexander said. "But beyond her youth and gender, as far as I can tell, she isn't that different from the rest of her family. Strong-willed, stubborn, ruthless –they call her the Iron Maiden."

"A worthy Master indeed." Alucard said, grinning as his eyes shone brightly for a moment. "But as you said, too much like the rest of her family to engineer a marked change in a vampire as old as I am. What else?"

"There _is_ nothing else, as far as I can tell." Alexander said irritably. "You're locked in a basement less than thirty years from now –which I still can't believe doesn't bother you– and have a new Master when you get out. You make a fledgling, too, but she's less than a year old, so I can't believe she'd have changed you _that_ much."

Alucard was giving him a strange look again.

"What?"

"You're from my future and not my current self, inasmuch as this memory _is_ current." the vampire said slowly. "When do we first encounter each other?"

"Badrick, Ireland, 1999." Alexander said immediately, a slight thrill going through his nerves as he remembered that fight, as unsatisfactorily as it had ended. The sudden and viscerally exciting clash had been _amazing_ , especially after so long without a good hunt.

"And how did I greet you?" Alucard asked him, cocking his head.

"With a bullet." Alexander replied, deadpan, making the vampire grin.

"No, no." he said in amusement. "Beyond that. What did I say?"

Alexander looked back on it and shrugged.

"Nothing much. You asked me what I'd done with the vampire both our parties had been sent to destroy, and I replied that I took care of it, then, as you and your fledgling were the only undead still left, I attacked _you_. We fought, you expressed surprise at the fact I could regenerate, and then I decapitated you. I was chasing down your fledgling to finish the job when your Master interrupted us and you reformed, making me retreat."

Alucard suddenly smirked, with wry corners at the edges of his mouth, as though he knew a delightful secret that Alexander didn't.

"What?" Alexander asked, eyeing that look warily.

"I've found what makes my current self different from this self." Alucard replied, macabrely giddy as he took several floating steps closer, then pressed a cold fingertip to Alexander's chest. " _You_."

Alexander raised an incredulous eyebrow.

"Me." he said flatly, trying to ignore the way his pulse jumped at the vampire's touch.

"The change between the me of now and the me of then." Alucard said, as though lecturing a particularly dense student. "Is that I have a rival worthy of my power, worthy of everything that I have become over all these long centuries."

Alexander's face lit up, making Alucard cackle as blood colored the priest's face nearly up to his ears.

"You can't be serious." he said, desperately fighting down the racing of his heart. "And there's easier ways to make fun of me, you know."

"Oh, I am abundantly aware." Alucard said as his finger slipped away, whisking both hands behind his back as he grinned at Alexander coquettishly. "You've seen visions of my past, but I have no concrete memory of you, which means that you experienced shadows of my memory only, not real events. Out of all the lives that you've seen, which of them had a man such as you to contend with?"

None. Alexander knew it, and Alucard knew that he knew it.

"You're what, 568 years old when I met you?" Alexander said, glaring at the vampire. "I can't possibly have had _that_ much of an effect."

Alucard's delighted expression softened as he spoke, becoming almost pitying.

"You have no idea, do you?" Alucard said softly as a shadow of something flickered behind his eyes. "Oh, my priest, think back to what you've seen. Think back to a time you must have experienced."

Alexander had an uncomfortable idea that he knew exactly what Alucard was referring to –that time down in the Hellsing basement, when Alucard had been stripped of his name, his power, everything that he was, and found himself _unchanged_.

The vampire had hit that dizzying peak where all power became pointless: he had reached a plateau and upon standing on it, found nothing, forever. He was infinity and nothing, because he could destroy infinitely, _live_ infinitely, which, in the end, meant nothing. Infinity in its essence meant being unchanged, and if something didn't change, it may as well have never existed. Dracula had begun to feel the first bare edges of that ennui when Van Helsing had captured him, and in the depths of the family estate as he was ruthlessly reformed, the vampire had looked back on a past that inevitably mirrored his future. Nothing would change for him. That was the final and most subtle curse of vampirism: after an intermediate time of indulgence, which could last centuries or even millennia, the undead could only endure, endlessly, _helplessly_ , for centuries and millennia more. They were caught in an empty plane of their own making, a place of no escape.

That was why Alucard valued him. Alexander was someone that could finally stop that endless wait and _kill_ Alucard, enact the only change that the vampire was still capable of: final dissolution into death. Alexander represented a metamorphosis of his own, a change, an end, something the vampire found precious beyond measure. In a strange way, it meant he was like the light on the vampire's horizon.

Alexander's traitorous feelings twisted and curled warmly in his chest as he thought of that.

"Okay, so maybe I did change you a little." he mumbled, averting his eyes. "That means that this is the last vision, though. After this, we'll wake up."

"Indeed. Which _means_ , I should give you a proper send-off." Alucard said with a smirk, and Alexander jumped as the vampire angled his suddenly-pointed nails inwards, stabbing his hand into his own chest as wet red flower immediately began to bloom over the pristine white of his suit. With a grin that was no less macabre than the dark blood dripping in streams from his soaked glove, Alucard pulled his hand back out of his chest, leaving a gory hole where his heart had been as he reached out and fastidiously placed his palm over Alexander's chest, over his own still-beating heart.

"That's disgusting." Alexander muttered halfheartedly.

"Make sure to give the me of the future a proper greeting." Alucard replied, chuckling, as the light began to grow around them both. "I'm sure neither of us would have liked to wait this long for nothing."

" _You_ didn't have to wait at all." Alexander scoffed, and the vampire gave him that warm, oddly human, almost _mournful_ grin once again.

"Five hundred and sixty-eight years, Alexander." he said. "I've waited too damn long."

The world went white for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the sake of the No-Millennium AU, we'll just assume that Walter and Alucard actually killed everyone in the base as claimed rather than Walter defecting.


	8. Vatican City, Rome, Italy, 1999 CE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amusingly enough, one of my college courses had a class session recently on emotional intelligence and control, and I discussed this fic because I didn't a single concern _other_ than this fic at that time. I was literally talking about the logistics and asexual insecurities of writing enemy hatesex fanfiction over a Zoom meeting with other future teachers and they were all giving me encouragement and ideas and taking the conversation _very seriously_. It was a weird moment of personal meeting professional.
> 
> Anyway, you have them to thank for this last chapter ending up the way it did, because I've never written smut before and I never would've without their encouragement. Possibly never will again? It's an area of weakness, and therefore something to be corrected, but I just can't make my brain make the words go. My salute to anyone who writes just absolute filth on the regular, because that is NOT something I am capable of.
> 
>  _Candles_ :  
> The tabernacle is a fancy box/storage cupboard in Catholic churches, within which a particular church keeps its extra Eucharist wafers, and there's a large lit candle in a red glass holder next to it, which signifies the presence of Jesus. This large candle is never supposed to go out, which contrasts to the votive candles, which are usually kept on a display/bank/rack nearby. Also in a red glass container, usually, these candles are instead about the size of tea lights, and you light them when you're saying prayers or making a wish for a dead relative. Depending on the layout of the church, both of these things may or may not be kept in the actual chapel –the church I grew up going to was very large, and there was a tabernacle in the chapel proper, where they kept the Eucharist to be used during communion, and another tabernacle in a different room across the lobby from the church, which did have the rack of votive candles. However, another church I went to in Europe (I think Scotland or Ireland somewhere? This was like seven years ago.) had the votive candles right in the chapel, towards the back and in a slight alcove.

__

* * *

_Come here, into my arms.  
"The darkness over there is bitter."_

__

_You are a flickering illusion._

__

_Finally, we shall become eternal.  
"The darkness over here is sweet."_

__

_I pierce deep into you._

* * *

The world faded in again, and Alexander jerked awake with a gasp, heart pounding. His back was against the cold and wonderfully solid stone of the marble floor, and looking up, he saw the familiar breathtaking beauty of the Padua basilica's glass windows and domed ceiling. The hazy pink light filtering through them told him that it was dawn, and his soul drank in the warmth and the _reality_ of that avidly, feeling the rock-solid steadiness and consistency of the world around him, so different than the dream-like visions.

Sitting up revealed that he had dried blood on his sleeve again, from the injury that had started all this, but all thoughts ground to a halt as he saw Alucard sitting up in a similar pose a few meters away. A quick flick of his eyes confirmed that they had been lying with the reliquary and no-longer-glowing relic roughly equidistant between them, but Alexander's attention was primarily arrested by the uncharacteristic deer-in-headlights look of the vampire as Alucard stared at him.

So much for hoping he wouldn't remember.

They both scrambled to their feet, instinct and habit conspiring to push them automatically towards fighting –but then they hesitated where they stood, Alucard's hands hovering vaguely in the direction of his guns, Alexander poised for an attack but not summoning his bayonets.

He swallowed and cleared his throat after a long, long moment.

"Do you-?"

"Yes." Alucard answered immediately. The vampire's expression was haunted, unsure: Alexander didn't feel much better.

There was another long silence as they stared at each other, searching for clarification neither could find. Alexander's eyes eventually wandered over to the relic, and his posture eased.

"We should – _you_ should leave." he coughed, shifting awkwardly. "The relic isn't active anymore."

The corner of one of Alucard's eyes twitched.

"I know." he all but growled, making Alexander wince a little. Having as much of your soul bared to someone as Alucard just had couldn't be a comfortable experience.

His eyes moved to the windows and the faint glow behind them, searching for another topic.

"Its sunrise." Alexander commented, making the vampire go oddly still. "How long do you think we've been gone?"

Alucard's red eyes drifted shut, probably making contact with his Master or his fledgling, whichever was closest and easiest. His placid expression twitched a little, and he frowned before opening his eyes and looking at Alexander.

"Three days. My Master is apoplectic, and it seems like Maxwell isn't far behind."

Alexander sighed wearily and rubbed his forehead. At least the resulting hunger, thirst, and exhaustion hadn't all compiled, otherwise the resulting disorientation would've hit him like a sledgehammer the second he came out of the vision.

"We should _definitely_ leave, then." he said, glancing back over at Alucard. The vampire nodded, and the faintest smile curved his mouth.

"I look forward to our next encounter." he said, before dissolving into a wisp of shadows, which quickly flickered elsewhere, no doubt chasing down his Master.

Alexander swallowed what definitely did not feel like _disappointment_ and pulled out a bible to do the same, only this time in a flurry of holy wards.

* * *

Maxwell had indeed been verging on manic, and it took a long, long time for Alexander to calm him down enough to get his story out. A team was immediately dispatched to isolate and secure the relic, keeping it from any further attempts and to study the effects it had shown itself to have on him and the vampire. Alexander wished them luck and vehemently wished never to see that particular relic again: it had stirred too much confusion in him.

Presumably, Hellsing underwent a similar debriefing, and all too probably Alucard endured a similar piercingly-voiced lecture from his boss, berating him for his recklessness around a holy relic and the consequences that might've occurred if either of them had damaged it. Alexander endured his lecture in stoic silence, nodding glumly at all the right portions and trying to tug his mind back from persistent thoughts of the vampire and all the memories he had experienced. He went through his mission report and all the rest of it in a daze, unable to concentrate. He felt disconnected, out of step, like the visions had jarred something loose in him and he couldn't find the missing piece and put it back. He was a live wire, constantly buzzing, never at rest, and he couldn't find the switch to turn himself back off.

Alexander ate and slept at random when all the fuss was over, but that didn't help: even after a dreamless sleep so long and deep it left him groggy when he woke up again, he still felt restless and hazy. Eventually, he did what he always did when he found himself in turmoil: he looked to God.

It was evening again when Alexander stepped out of the orphanage, in his more casual priest's uniform of a black shirt and slacks. The breeze was warm and soft against his skin, and Alexander sighed happily: the summer air seemed to clear his mind a little, give him room to think. He enjoyed the gentle chirping of crickets and the scent from the mishmashed butterfly garden he and the children had planted earlier that year, walking slowly but purposefully towards the chapel. He wanted to think, and probably needed to pray, and these were the dead hours, when even the most squirrely child had long settled down and their caretakers were sleeping the sleep of the exhausted and fulfilled.

As glorious as the chapel was, it was also empty and private, a liminal space frozen in time, and Alexander needed that. He needed privacy and isolation as he thought.

The orphanage's chapel wasn't anything as large or ornate as some of the other structures in Rome, of course. Though they had ended up using the adjacent chapel built directly into the building, this structure had been made with children in mind, so there were no dramatic sculptures, no gilded moldings, nothing too expensive or intricate. The building was just large enough to house about fifty people in the two rows of pews, one on either side of the plain red carpeted aisle, and the pews themselves were long and low, of plain dark wood. Aside from the equally plain altar, the windows drew the most attention, a glorious rainbow of biblical scenes and abstract borders, which shone awe-inspiring pictograms of light during the day, but were slick and saturated by the blackness behind them at this time of night. Still, the rich red and blue, the flickers of yellow and green, the washed-out darkness of the clear pieces, it made an impressive sight even now, something that stilled and calmed him with its familiar beauty as he went around lighting candles.

The warm yellow glow was comfortable and familiar too, as familiar as the resinous scent of frankincense that he breathed in, letting it still his racing, errant thoughts, empty out his mind. As always, here he found peace.

Alexander left the bank of votive candles as they were in their red glass containers, glancing up to make sure that the tabernacle candle was still burning, even though the other orphanage staff checked in here frequently. It was, and that relaxed him a little more, so by the time he had finished lighting spare candles to the point of getting a comfortable glow, he felt almost centered, and more like himself than he had in days.

Kneeling before the altar, Alexander crossed himself reverently and closed his eyes, bowing his head as he began to pray. The familiar cadence of the words further helped to soothe his disordered mind, and he felt himself relaxing, the tension in his shoulders and around his temples finally easing. Finally in a place of ease, finally centered, he eventually allowed his foremost thoughts to drift upwards, occupying his mind, like he was shifting through flour looking for kernels of the truth.

First and foremost, Alucard. The vampire was _haunting_ him, mentally if not physically. Alexander's feelings and his well-centered world had shifted and spun out of its axis, and he wasn't sure what to do about it, which was why he was here to begin with, kneeling in the forgotten sanctuary of the church and appealing to God. He needed resolution, and he couldn't find it on his own. The vampire would surely be delighted to know that Alexander's prayer was full of _conflict_ , doubts and the words that they had shared in that hedge maze swirling in his mind.

Alexander had long ago resigned himself to the fact that he probably wouldn't see Heaven. Given what he did for a living, it was inevitable that the sins of murder and sadism would eventually corrupt him beyond salvation, and he had been, he _was_ fine with that, because _someone_ had to do it, and he was uniquely suited for the task. He had allowed the church to refine and hone him like a blade, an executioner's guillotine for God, making him even more suited for the task, and Alucard might've been right, damn him, in saying that Alexander had become so immersed in that life that it was no longer possible for him to leave it. He was stuck in a rut of his own making, trapped by the circumstances that he had created for himself nearly from birth, and Alexander found doubt plaguing him for the very first time.

He wasn't going to leave. That was obvious: he might fall far enough to think things about the vampire that no good Christian man should be thinking, but Alexander wasn't going to plunge so deep as to abandon his responsibilities and throw away everything he had done just because of one single moment of doubt. His will and resolution had been no small part of what had gotten him to where he was now in the first place.

But the problem was that if he couldn't leave –and he wouldn't– then he also couldn't return to how he had been. There were a _lot_ of reasons to dislike Alucard –his irreverence, his arrogance, his perversity, that damned smirk– but now, fresh from the bewildering pattern of those visions, Alexander couldn't _hate_ him anymore. That lack of hatred had ripped away something inside him, gutted him and scoured him out, and he wasn't sure how to _handle_ what was rising up in its place.

Alexander sighed without opening his eyes, the sound quiet and melancholy in the empty room.

He wasn't sure when he had tipped over the edge. With the Count? Seeing Alucard move with the silken confidence Alexander was used to, combined with the unbridled power the vampire had never showed as his modern equivalent, that had certainly stirred something in him. Or maybe with the vampire beneath the Hellsing estate, when Alucard was blank and lost and all too pitiable. Even more galling, was it right at the beginning, as he realized what Alucard had been like as a human man, seeing the faith that cut too close to home for Alexander to ignore?

Maybe he had been attracted to Alucard since the beginning, and the constant barrage of visions had only broken down his resistance to the idea.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Alexander tensed as his eyes flew open. The question had been low and lazy, almost polite, but there was no escaping the familiarity of that voice even when it was devoid of its usual underlying mockery.

Turning around on his knees, Alexander saw that Alucard was sprawled carelessly over one of the front pews just behind him, red duster draped beneath his form, elbows hooked over the back of the pew and legs splayed outwards in a pose of ostentatious ease, head tilted slightly to the side as he watched Alexander. The warm amusement in his eyes made the priest swallow, hard.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, standing up as the vampire languidly raised his chin, following Alexander's movement with his eyes without otherwise stirring.

"It's unfair for you to know so much about me." Alucard said after a moment. The candlelight gleamed off his polished boots as he shifted to cross his legs, moving without a care for gravity or the physics of his own joints. It would've been somewhat chilling to anyone who wasn't used to dealing with vampires, but as it was, Alexander barely noticed the unearthly sight. He was more annoyed with himself for failing to notice the presence of the vampire when Alucard had been only a few meters away, though Alexander supposed that the vampire had to have kept at least a _few_ tricks from him, even after all this.

"It's not like I meant to see it, and you weren't cooperating with me by remembering everything in time." he replied, folding his arms and glowering at the vampire. Alucard smirked.

"Well, it isn't as if that's hard to fix." he said, red eyes twinkling. "You'll just have to reciprocate."

Alexander blinked.

"What?"

"Bare your soul to me in return." Alucard said lazily, twirling one finger in a slow circle, shocking Alexander into a rare silence. "Your life has been much shorter than mine, so it'll be much easier and quicker to tell."

"You- you do know what that _sounds_ like, right?" Alexander sputtered incredulously as he found his voice again, trying to ignore the subtle heat creeping up the back of his neck. It could be taken as gathering information so that they'd be on equal terms again, but it could also equally be taken as a desire for _intimacy_.

"Oh, I do." Alucard said with a grin. "I want to know the man who gave me comfort and challenge throughout all the myriad pieces of my life."

Alexander hastily unfolded his arms and took an automatic step back as Alucard stood, starting towards him.

"I want to get to know the paladin who would've crossed medieval Europe to fight at my side because of the strength of his faith." the vampire said, holding his eyes as he advanced and Alexander retreated, step by slow step. "I want to learn of the hunter who would climb a snow-covered peak and fight a vampire in his own castle without hesitation. I want to pick apart the rival who kept pace with me when I was unrestrained and at the height of my cunning. I want to understand the priest that would minister to a lost soul and give him hope. I want to debate the zealot that would defend and understand his perspective, both in regards to the living and the dead."

Alexander's heel hit the back of the altar, and he came to a tense stop as the vampire halted in front of me.

"I want to know the man that was worth five centuries of waiting." Alucard said quietly. He half-smiled and reached out, lazily trailing his fingers up Alexander's arm. "Perhaps the Jerusalem that I fought for was not a place, but a person."

It was so bloody like the vampire to wait until Alexander had finally found his bearings before yanking the metaphorical carpet out from underneath him. Alexander had just barely managed to come to terms with the fact that he had _feelings_ for the vampire, however sinful and probably unrequited they might be, and then the bastard had to turn the tables on him completely with an admittance and an invitation that no one could mistake. Not even him.

"You were here to pray." Alucard said, eyes following the light, curious trace of his fingers as they slid up over Alexander's shoulder. "Did you think you could wipe away all that we shared with mere discipline and denial? My memories are stronger than that, _Judas Priest_ , and so is the bond we formed within them. Prayer and penitence won't be able to sever that."

"You're trying to make it stronger." Alexander argued weakly, making Alucard grin.

"Does that disturb you? You're a priest, as you so adamantly insisted throughout all of this: if you believe in God, then you should believe in His plans." the vampire said confidently. "Two beings who complement each other as well as we do _must_ be meant to be together."

Alexander could've said that that was just coincidence, but didn't. Some things were too big for coincidence: oh, he and Alucard could've both been men of faith in their human lifetimes, could both be enraptured by the thrill of battle, could be a thousand other facets of their personalities, but nothing would change the fact that nearly every facet in both of them had its mate in the other, an interlocking place or a mirrored shape. They fit together too well, had history that was too close for mere _coincidence_.

"You were touching a holy relic when all this started." Alucard said, probably sensing how he was weakening, how his already unsteady alignment was shifting further, inevitably out of control. "That was what created this bond. If it was created and fostered by holy power, it can't be as wrong as you think, now can it?"

Alexander knew exactly where this was going. How close Alucard was standing, the way he was looking at him –the vampire _wanted_ , and like all things he wanted, he was relentless and insatiable in pursuing it. The priest could do what his faith demanded of him, what his training as a vampire hunter was screaming, what his own unease at pursuing and allowing _this_ , for himself, was muttering to him.

He reached out and twisted his fingers in Alucard's cravat instead.

"You tell _anyone_ about this, and I'll kill you." he said, tugging the vampire just the slightest bit closer as he tightened his grip. _Kill_ wasn't really the right phrase –Alexander was inventive with words, sure, but there was no threat he could make that would encompass that kind of betrayal. But Alucard understood perfectly anyways, because of course he did.

"I know." he said smoothly, smiling, before leaning in. Alexander automatically tensed at that first contact as their lips pressed together, instincts warring within him –so much was wrong, Alucard was a man, he was cold, he was _dead_ , he was a vampire…

But at the same time, it felt right, and he didn't have the nerve to try and pick apart why.

Contrary to what he would have expected –and not at _all_ helping his shaky feelings– Alucard was slow, almost gentle with this initial kiss, drawing it out, letting him become accustomed. Alexander's nerves tore and frayed with every pounding heartbeat, wondering if he was supposed to _do_ something, wondering if he would dare to do something if he was, and then Alucard's hand cupped fondly over his cheek and that was _definitely_ not helping him think.

He tentatively pushed back, reciprocating, because, well, that was what you _did_ with a kiss. Everything else was a tangled mess right now –feelings, emotions, sensations, instinct, training– but he knew that much at least, and he clung to it like a drowning man would a piece of driftwood. This he knew for sure, and Alexander liked to follow the sure and certain path whenever possible.

Alucard made a pleased sound, making him blush, but he didn't dare –didn't _want_ , a tiny part of him admitted– to pull away from the vampire. This felt _pleasant_ , and that in itself was almost terrifying. He didn't know how to deal with this feeling _good_ , and perversely he sought comfort in the source of his unease, pressing harder into the vampire as Alucard moved to deepen the kiss at the same time.

Unexpectedly, Alucard's fangs cut into his lips with a brief pulse of pain, and his tongue flicked against Alucard's as they both automatically moved to lick the blood away, though for two different reasons. Alexander's face burned as he felt the vampire smirk against his mouth, bloodied lips moving to form hasty excuses.

Alucard didn't give him the time to form any.

The kiss became exponentially harder, hungrier within the space of a second, stealing the breath from him as Alucard's other hand moved to cup the other side of his face. Alucard was moving his lips in a way that kept his fangs from cutting Alexander again and he did _not_ want to think about how the vampire knew how to do that. Feelings rushed through him, electrifying in his veins and pooling molten and new in the pit of his stomach, and he didn't know what to do with his own hands, only that he desperately wanted to do _something_.

Cautiously, tentatively, he moved them up to Alucard's shoulders, resting his hands there in a position that was oddly reminiscent of a fighting move –how _easy_ it would be to shove the vampire away, Alexander suddenly thought, rip Alucard's mouth away from his own and send him staggering backwards at least a step or two in a brief moment of shock.

He didn't.

Alucard pulled away to give him a moment to breathe, smiling from a few inches away as his red eyes shimmered and glowed like rubies.

"You're taking this well." he hummed appreciatively, air ghosting over Alexander's lips. It was an odd sensation, and he shivered and swallowed, instinctively moving once again to swipe his tongue over his mouth. He didn't miss how Alucard's eyes briefly flicked down to follow the movement, either.

"Don't make me think about it." Alexander said, which as of this moment was true. There was a certain amount of soul-searching that would follow for almost every separate facet of the last few minutes, and taken all together they were more than enough to make the world realign subtly, irreversibly, in ways he couldn't track, like gravity had shifted underfoot. New rules were in play, and he didn't want to _deal_ with those new rules, not them and _definitely_ not the larger aspect of what they implied. Not here, not now.

It felt pleasant. He wanted to focus on that.

"As you like." Alucard purred, leaning in again. The kiss started where the last one had left off: hard, hungry, _devouring_ , the vampire subtly nudging him to get a better angle or guide Alexander when it was obvious that he was out of his depth with the hands still cupping his face. Alexander's heart was pounding so hard and fast Alucard had to be able to _feel_ it, and to his dismay it wasn't all due to fear and guilt.

He felt an odd sort of swirl against his fingers, a velvety tugging sensation like water being sucked down a drain, and then instead of indifferent red fabric he felt Alucard's _skin_ , smooth and perfect. The sudden transition from indifferently room-temperature fabric to icy flesh was shocking, the more so because his nerves instinctively recognized the shape and texture of Alucard's shoulder and his mind insisted that it _should_ be as warm as his own. Alucard's hands left his face, sliding down between them to tug gently at the buttons to Alexander's plain black shirt.

Alexander hated how _affirming_ it was, realizing that the vampire had noted his preference for silent signals and communication and was keeping to them –however ironic the term was– religiously. Alucard accepted his need not to talk about this and met him halfway –it was fulfilling and it was vulnerable all at once, to understand and _be_ understood so intimately. In any case, he understood what the vampire wanted, and didn't stop him as Alucard began to divest him as well.

 _Very_ quickly.

Alexander sucked in a startled breath and pulled away when Alucard had his shirt halfway off his shoulders and hanging open around his torso within seconds of his tacit acceptance, staring at him in shock as Alucard paused, looking at him attentively.

"How did you-"

"I've had a lot of practice undressing a human partner." Alucard answered with a wicked smirk, tugging on the shirt again as a blush burned across Alexander's face and he tentatively loosened his grip on Alucard's shoulders, allowing the vampire to slide it off completely.

Now with some space to look at things, Alexander noted again how odd it was to see Alucard without his enveloping clothing. The vampire always had some kind of cloak or cape dragging at his heels, as needlessly ominous as it was dramatic, and he looked both smaller and larger without it. There wasn't a single scar, freckle, or blemish on his naked torso, just a smooth pale expanse of unnaturally perfect skin, etched with the faint outline of muscles, and without thinking Alexander spread his hand over Alucard's chest, over his heart. The space beneath his palm was cold and still, and he was aware of the vampire watching him, silently. Alucard lifted a gloved hand of his own, placing it over Alexander's as his fingers moved in a gentle caress over the priest's.

"Was it like this when you woke up?" Alexander asked quietly.

"I wouldn't know." Alucard said, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards slightly. "I was without my head for the first few minutes, and by the time I reformed, I had an army to teach a lesson to."

"Is it odd?"

Alucard was silent for a long moment.

"I miss some of my old scars." he murmured eventually, with the sense that he was telling Alexander something that he had never told anyone. "I considered them memories of victories I had won."

The fingers of the vampire's free hand grazed up his ribs, marking an injury that only he could remember now.

"It was odd, having them gone in my old form."

"And in this one?" Alexander asked. Alucard's gaze flicked back up to him, and the vampire huffed, smiling again.

"You of all people know that this body has nothing to do with how I was in the past." Alucard chuckled, fingers stirring in another caress over Alexander's. "Besides, if you're going to ask me about _my_ scars, its only fair that I ask about yours."

Alexander shivered as the vampire's cool touch glided across his cheek.

"It was a long time ago." he mumbled, distracted and not sure which terrifying intimacy he should turn to: physical or mental.

"I can imagine, since I've yet to find anything that can scar you past your regeneration." Alucard said dryly. "Even when Walter created the Jackal _specifically_ for you."

"Don't talk about that now either." It was bad enough discussing intimacy when they were engaged in it –discussing outside matters, especially in their nebulous, bloody, and violent grey area between rivalry and something else, was beyond Alexander's capabilities at the moment.

"So, just don't talk at all?" Alucard asked, giving him a wry look. "I'm sure we can find an activity to accommodate that."

Alexander made an incoherent noise, jerking his hand away and going red.

"Oh, don't pretend you don't know _exactly_ where this is going, Anderson." Alucard told him, hair starting to waver as shadows began to fill the room. Alexander watched them warily out of the corner of his eye, but it seemed like Alucard didn't intend to make them approach, instead content with filling the room from top to bottom, the shimmering black and red blocking out the saturated colors of the stained glass and the serviceable white of the plaster between said windows, crawling across the floor, creeping up the ceiling, blocking out everything but the two of them and the light from the candles. The shadows overwhelmed the holy sanctity of the church, leaving the two of them alone in their sin, and Alexander felt simultaneously reassured and even more nervous.

He felt a tug on his trousers and looked down, then jumped, face reddening further, as he saw shadows weaving through his belt and crawling over his shoes, loosening his clothing ever more quickly than the vampire could've managed on his own. When he looked at Alucard to complain, he was met with a fierce kiss, and instead of guiding him into the vampire _took_ what he wanted, hands sliding over Alexander's body instead as he stiffened –in more ways than one– at that icy touch.

 _Too fast_ , he wanted to tell Alucard, too fast and too much all at once, but at the same time he knew if he said that then the vampire would _stop_ , and Alexander didn't want him to stop, not completely. Despite knowing where this was going, despite feeling the vampire peel his clothes away from him, despite being flustered more badly than he had been in his entire life by the feeling of the vampire's nude body pressing against his, he didn't tell him to stop.

No, his protests were saved for when the vampire suddenly shifted, pushing him back hard, and Alexander both abruptly remembered and felt the fact that the altar was directly behind him as it caught under his legs and he was forced to fall back, one elbow jerking painfully against the wooden surface to keep himself from smacking into it in an uncontrolled fall as Alucard pulled back.

Then he realized exactly where he was and what the smug, excited look on Alucard's face meant, and panicked.

"No-"

Alexander surged upwards, only to be met by Alucard's hand against the flat of his chest as the vampire pushed him back down, back hitting the altar was he was pinned firmly against it. His cheeks burned red as shadows crept over his hands, sealing them in place and pinning him as firmly as steel shackles.

"Not _here_ , Alucard!"

"What better place to take a lover before the eyes of God?" Alucard asked as he bent down, murmuring into the priest's ear. "Its not vows or a ceremony, but I think we can make do."

Alexander snorted with ill humor.

"Which of us is the bride in that macabre scenario?" he asked, not sure if he would like the answer. Alucard pulled back with a smirk, looking deep into Alexander's eyes as he extended his long, serpentine tongue and licked it wetly over one finger, implicit sensuality in every movement.

"I wonder." he said dryly as Alexander's blush deepened even further.

"What, exactly, are you going to do here, vampire?" he asked, trying to sound wary and not breathless.

"That depends." Alucard said, settling between Alexander's legs as the vampire's voice vibrated up through his knees and into every bone and muscle of his chest. Alucard tilted his head with a smirk. "What are you going to _let_ me do?"

Alexander swallowed hard.

"Find out for yourself." he said tightly, which would've sounded a lot more like the threat he wanted it to be if not for their position.

"Are you sure you want to give me that kind of freedom?" Alucard purred, hands drifting over Alexander's bare chest, his touch slow, exploratory, _exquisite_ , making the priest choke on a whine as his whole body flinched and pushed upwards. He was more achingly hard than he had ever been and he hated how Alucard could make him feel this way with just a few idle damned _touches_. "My past selves had a lot of ideas about what to do with you. I'll have to make sure to take my time to match their inventiveness."

"Sh-shut-"

He _keened_ when the vampire's touch raced down his chest to wrap around his erection, giving it just a light squeeze. That alone was enough to make him _writhe_ , precum dribbling down his length as he desperately fought the urge to thrust up wantonly against the vampire's hand.

"I wouldn't be so mouthy if I was in your situation, priest." Alucard said with a smug leer. "You're sensitive enough as to be untouched, and you _know_ how much I enjoy virgins."

"Bite me and I put a bayonet through your fucking skull." Alexander wheezed, fingers tensing and curling under the heavy grip of the shadows, legs tensing as he tried to find purchase somewhere, _anywhere_ that didn't have him pushing into that sinfully good touch. Alucard had left his legs free but that didn't mean much, not when the vampire was already wedged comfortably between his knees and clearly there to stay until he dragged _something_ out of Alexander.

Alucard _purred_ at that threat, leaning down to let his tongue trace over the crook of Alexander's neck and shoulder.

"So delightfully violent, as always." he murmured, nearly a moan as he moved downwards, tracing the line of Alexander's artery down over his clavicle. "Will you rip me apart as I tear into you, Anderson? Oh, let me _feel_ every sensation you can bring to bear, my nemesis?!"

Alexander jerked upwards, biting his tender lips hard enough to make them bleed again, as Alucard's tongue swirled lasciviously around a nipple and his teeth soon followed. It felt better than _anything_ that minor had a right to feel, and his breathless curses cracked and whined in the air as Alucard applied both hands and mouth thoroughly over the priest's body, drinking in every sound, every twitch, every heaving gasp with hooded red eyes and a pleased expression that hovered just on the sadistic side of fond.

Dimly, with the parts of him that could still think, Alexander knew that the vampire was still holding back, still pacing himself at least a little as he slathered his long, pointed tongue over his own fingers, getting them obscenely wet and shining in the wavering light of the candles all around before lowering his hand again. The vampire was hard, Alexander had seen it before he looked away to block out the sight of the inevitable. He wasn't ready to face that, not quite yet, and the vampire _knew_ that, because if he went at the pace he was undoubtedly capable of, that Alucard clearly _wanted_ to, he would've broken Alexander in half by now.

The thought was oddly arousing. Straining against each other as a violent exercise was fulfilling, so how much more so would it be as an intimacy…?

Alexander didn't have the wherewithal to tell Alucard to stop as one of those skilled hands moved _between_ his thighs –on the contrary, he found them parting, and he closed his eyes tightly, panting gasps rasping at his throat as the pleasure subsumed him, dragged his mind apart and made him all too pliant for what the vampire wanted. There would be confessions for this later, confession and prayer and all too many whirling emotions bound up together, but for now, they were as intimately alone as they had been within the visions, as Alexander had been within the sanctuary, and he found that he didn't have the will or energy to maintain a façade around Alucard anymore. He wanted him, and they both knew it.

As ever, the two of them were too much alike.

All thoughts were forcefully ripped from Alexander's head as the vampire's exploratory fingers roamed over a certain special spot deep within him, and he didn't just keen, he _shrieked_ , body moving before his mind as he jerked wantonly against Alucard, whimpering, please, God, it was the most intense pleasure he had ever felt in his _life_ , he wanted more, _needed_ more…

Alucard growled, low and primal, and he moved over Alexander like water, hands and shadows pushing and pulling at his knees, lifting them up, spreading him, and the vampire's teeth tore into Alexander's mouth in a harsh, fierce kiss, filling his mouth with the taste of death and his own blood. Alexander pushed back and found his hands free, the vampire's shadows likely occupied with his legs at this point, and his fingers dove into Alucard's hair as Alexander surged into the kiss, feeling the inky tendrils wind and tangle through his fingers with a life of their own.

Alucard shifted and multiple things clicked together at once, the purpose of the spit, those damned/blessed fingers that had pulled and stretched at him and touched him _there_ , the position that Alucard had pulled and now held him in, and above all the feeling of the vampire's cock as it brushed against his ass. Alexander wasn't ready, but he was also far, far past backing out.

Alexander couldn't describe the noise he made against Alucard's tongue when the vampire penetrated him, only that he didn't _want_ to describe it as another layer of red joined the deep blush painting his face and most of his chest.

It hurt. It felt good. It was new. It was perfect.

He wasn't sure what the hell he was supposed to do now, but Alucard solved that problem neatly by starting to move against him, and at that point Alexander wasn't _capable_ of doing anything but obeying the impulses that surged through his body, moving back against the vampire with a wantonness he vaguely hoped he wouldn't remember later as Alucard slammed against him hard enough for bruises to bloom before fading all over his skin. Alucard's body was cold and dead, but everywhere he touched Alexander felt merely cool, even his tongue, even his _cock_ , and nothing had ever felt so good.

Alucard's pace was fast, violent, almost merciless, and he frequently broke away to scrape his tongue or his teeth across the increasingly sensitive portions of Alexander's neck and chest, keeping barely within his unspoken promise not to bite as bruise-deep hickeys joined the fading marks on Alexander's skin. It was a disappointment that those were marks of intimacy that neither of them could share, as the steady and building pleasure slowly broke down Alexander's inhibitions enough to reciprocate that as well, brushing his lips over the unnatural chill of Alucard's flesh and hearing the vampire shudder and sigh in his ear, just a light exhale, but more than enough when Alexander knew that the vampire didn't need to breathe at all.

Then Alucard shifted and tugged up his knees a little, and Alexander's scream rang through the enclosed space as white-hot ecstasy seared up his spine and he felt his own seed land on his belly, slick and hot. Alucard purred at the sight, a purr that rippled down his entire form as his hair shifted and writhed, and he began to move at that new angle, even harder, plunging Alexander down into an abyss of pleasure and _drowning_ him with the sensations it evoked. The word _rapture_ lanced across his mind amidst the pulses of heat, and Alexander would've groaned at the irony if he had the breath or the coherency.

Blood joined the mess between them as they surged and moved together, dripping thickly down Alexander's chin and over his heaving bare chest as he and Alucard kissed frantically, sloppily, not caring about air –Alexander was the only one who needed to breathe– or Alucard's fangs as they cut into the priest's mouth and tongue again and again and again. Endorphins racing through his system, Alexander didn't have the ability to think or to care, and Alucard was receiving more than enough stimulation to leave the vampire in a similarly dazed, wanton state.

Blood and aggression shared between them –it was too familiar, too intimate, and Alexander was never going to be able to face the vampire in combat again without remembering this night.

"Come for me, priest." Alucard breathed harshly against his cut and swollen lips, thrusting against him furiously. "Come for me again, my beloved nemesis."

Something in him _snapped_ upon hearing that, and Alexander's breathless curse became an incoherent scream as he obeyed and came, the aftermath shaking through him like the remnants of an earthquake as his nerves buzzed and tingled, arms clasped around the vampire's neck and fingers tearing into the sharp protrusions of his shoulderblades as Alucard continued to chase his own finish.

"Beautiful." Alucard murmured in tones reserved for _worship_ , lips gliding over the line of Alexander's jaw. "My surprise, my Jerusalem. My Alexander Anderson."

Alexander nearly _sobbed_ from the feeling of the vampire's cock dragging within him. "A-Alucard!"

"I will crawl into your soul and rip even the thought of anyone else away." Alucard growled harshly in his ear, starting to shudder as an edge of incoherency, even _desperation_ began to creep into his own voice. "You are mine. You are _mine_."

"Yours!" Alexander choked willingly, unthinkingly, and there was probably a reason that the vampire snarled and came immediately afterwards, tensing, his body curling against Alexander's, pressing down heavily against his skin like Alucard wanted to push right _through_ it.

They rode the aftermath out together like that, twisted together and entangled in ways Alexander couldn't even begin to pick apart, him shaky and sweating, gasping for air, Alucard locked against him like a statue, unwilling to be pushed back a single inch as he soaked in Alexander's warmth with half-lidded eyes, resting where he was draped against Alexander's chest.

Eventually, finally, after at least ten minutes, when his pulse and breathing had climbed back to manageable levels and he thought he could string more than a few syllables together, Alexander inhaled and looked at the vampire.

"This better not have been all you had in mind." he said as sharply as he was able, and Alucard smiled, fingers idly meandering down Alexander's chest. He tried not to shiver at the need that touch ignited in him.

"Oh, of course not." Alucard hummed lazily. "I've sated neither myself nor my curiosity, and I doubt you have either. We can save the rest for next time."

Alexander swallowed thickly and tried to remind himself that he had to sleep tonight, and more than that, people would come looking for him if he stayed here for that much longer.

"N-next time?" he asked, voice still a little shaky.

"You've yet to bare your soul in return." Alucard said, glancing up at him with a brief flicker of not-entirely-playful irritation. "And you probably have more questions about me. I propose a deal."

"A deal?"

"Whoever wins our next fight can ask a question about the other." Alucard said, before baring his fangs in a mocking smile. "In case you were feeling _reluctant_ to face me in battle after this little tryst."

Alexander flushed and looked away, acutely aware of the mess on him and the vampire's length within him.

"I'm not _that_ easily swayed." he mumbled, and sensed more than saw the vampire's smile turn fond, warm in a way he had never seen before.

"I know." Alucard said softly, those cold fingers brushing over Alexander's heart for a moment. "Believe me, I know."


End file.
